The construction of University Road has spanned five-and-a-half long months in which citizens have suffered tremendously. PHOTOS: ATHAR KHAN/EXPRESS
KARACHI: After several empty promises and assurances by the Sindh government about the initiation of the long-awaited construction of University Road, work on the project finally kicked off last December. The road is finally complete and was inaugurated on Sunday night by Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah.
In January, 2016, then Sindh chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah paid a visited to University Road and expressed dissatisfaction over its condition and gave a two-week deadline to the municipal authorities to repair it. However, the authorities took almost a year to initiate the repair work.
Situation prior to construction
Prior to the construction work, there were huge ditches on the road and the thoroughfare was often inundated with sewage water. Residents of the area claimed that it would be easier and more comfortable to ride a rollercoaster than to drive through those huge ditches.
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The condition of the road deteriorated as time passed. #FixIt campaigner Alamgir Khan hung an effigy of the Pakistan Peoples Party’s Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Shah over the pedestrian bridge in front of Karachi University’s Silver Jubilee gate in October, 2016.
Next to the effigy, Khan had tied a banner to the pedestrian bridge which read ‘Respected Khursheed Shah Sahab please check the quality of University Road’.
Soon after Sindh’s incumbent chief minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, initiated construction work on the road on December 22, 2016, under the Sindh local government department, not the elected Karachi Metropolitan Corporation’s (KMC) city council.
Ill-planning during construction
The flow of traffic worsened after the initiation of construction work due to the government’s lack of planning to provide an alternative encroachment-free route. The road’s track towards Nipa from Hassan Square was initially blocked and traffic was diverted to the opposite track and onto the service road.
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Meanwhile, the government failed miserably to remove encroachments such as roadside restaurants, push carts and illegal parking from the service roads.
When the roads were dug up, an official of the KMC told The Express Tribune that the Sindh government realised that they need to replace the Karachi Water and Sewage Board’s (KWSB) main 48-inch diameter water pipeline which is faulty and leaks every now and then, destroying the road’s surface.
“The condition of the pipeline was so bad that it needed to be replaced immediately,” the official explained, adding that had the government constructed the road without replacing the pipeline all the investment would have gone down the drain.
A senior official in the Sindh government accepted that the replacement of the pipeline was not initially included in the project cost.
Road accidents
During the construction, University Road became a hub of traffic accidents and many commuters lost their lives. At least four people were killed, out of which three were female students of Federal Urdu University, and around a dozen others were injured when a minibus overturned near Baitul Mukarram Masjid on main University Road, apparently due to over-speeding, in February.
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It is believed that the accident happened after the minibus hit a concrete block placed in the middle of the road as a demarcation for two-way traffic.
Just a week before this accident, another female student of the same university was killed while two others were seriously injured in a bus accident.
Post-construction
Construction work has been completed, according to Sindh Local Government Directorate Director Niaz Soomro, in a five-and-a-half month time period. The roads on both sides, he said have been turned into four-lane passages with a service road on both sides.
Earlier, he said that there was no service road in front of Federal Urdu University, due to which the students used to face problems.
The width of the main carriageway on both sides of the road is 13.8 metres, while the central median is four metres wide. A new water line has been laid with diameters ranging from 18 inches to 24 inches, while sewerage and storm water drains have been constructed. The total project cost was Rs884 million.
Around 250 date palms and gulmohar trees have also been planted on the central median.
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