Numaish Chowrangi underpass still a distant reality

Traffic police brace for months of chaos as work on underpass to begin on Muharram 10

KARACHI: The federal government is set to start work on the most important phase of the Green Line Bus Rapid Transport System (BRTS) - the underpass at Numaish Chowrangi - after the 10th of Muharram, on September 26. One of the biggest worries for the authorities now is how to manage the traffic congestion that will ensue due to the construction work.

During the first phase, the track from Capri Cinema to Numaish Chowrangi will be closed for traffic. After Imam Hussain's Chehlum processions, the upward track from Numaish Chowrangi to Capri Cinema too will be closed. Construction work on this phase is expected to be completed within six to eight months.

An official of the Karachi Infrastructure Development Company Limited (KIDCL) - a public limited company working under the aegis of the federal government - told The Express Tribune that the construction work on the underpass was supposed to start after August 14. However, the city administration and law enforcement agencies did not approve the plan. The work will now start after September 26.

The official added that alternative routes for traffic have been devised and would be shared with the traffic police soon. The plan was devised in a meeting last month, headed by Karachi Commissioner Sualeh Farooqi. However, no decision could be made regarding the removal of encroachments in Saddar, Preedy Street and Garden Road.

The meeting was attended by KIDCL Chief Finance Officer Zubair Channa, Traffic SSP Malik Usman Asghar, Traffic Engineering Bureau Senior Director Qazi Abdul Qadir, Karachi Metropolitan Corporation's (KMC) Transport and Communication Department chief engineer SM Taha, Additional Deputy Commissioner of District East, Mazar-e-Quaid Traffic DSP and other officials of the traffic police.

According to a traffic police official present in the meeting, two alternative routes - Preedy Street and Garden Road - have been marked for the movement of traffic while construction work is underway at Numaish Chowrangi. The official, who requested not to be named, added that some of the traffic will also be directed to the road which leads to Student Biryani from Taj Medical Complex. The meeting also discussed improving the condition and width of the roads.

When the traffic police officials brought up the subject of encroachments in Saddar and its adjoining areas, the meeting could not reach a decision due to the absence of relevant officials from the KMC and the Karachi Cantonment Board's Anti-Encroachment Cell.

According to the traffic police official, steps to improve the condition of the roads on the alternative routes and removal of encroachments are vital if the smooth flow of traffic is to be ensured. He added that traffic police officials would be posted along the routes to manage the traffic but their efforts would be fruitless if the issues aren't resolved beforehand.

Traffic police DSP Arshad Siddiqui told The Express Tribune that his department was ready to extend full cooperation for the project. "We have created no obstacles nor have we raised any objections to this project," he said.

Traffic Police SP Zafar Malik told The Express Tribune that designating an alternative route at Numaish Chowrangi was not an issue. "We will provide alternative routes when the development work starts" he said. "We have a lot of options to use for alternative routes."

A nightmare to manage

Numaish Chowrangi, located next to the Quaid's mausoleum on MA Jinnah Road is one of the busiest intersections in the port city. According to the traffic police's estimates, as many as 150,000 vehicles pass through here on an average day, travelling toward the commercial areas such as Saddar, II Chundrigar Road and Tower. As many as 10 routes converge on this one point, the major ones being Shahrae Quaideen and Brito Road. Besides, light traffic from two smaller link roads - Parsi Colony Road and Nizami Road also pours onto the intersection.

According to the KIDCL's traffic plan, vehicles heading from Gurumandir to Saddar and Tower will be redirected to New MA Jinnah road, Peoples Chowrangi and Preedy Street, while Garden Road will also be part of the alternative routes. On the other hand, traffic coming from the Central Business District - from Bunder Road to Tower - will be redirected to Preedy Street and Peoples Chowrangi.

Slow pace of work

The Green Line project which envisages a dedicated bus corridor from Surjani Town to Municipal Park was commenced in January 2016 and was supposed to be completed by December 2017.

According to a survey by The Express Tribune, work on the underpass at Numaish Chowrangi started at the beginning of the current year. Currently, construction work on the ramp of the underpass on both sides is progressing at a sluggish pace.

Traffic Police Section Officer Muhammad Talat, who is posted at Numaish Chowrangi, told The Express Tribune that work on the underpass was under way for the past nine months but the pace was extremely slow. The federal government has, however, completed work on the tracks on both the sides of MA Jinnah Road, from the Qualid's mausoleum to Imambargah Ali Raza. This road has been widened to include a fifth lane by removing the footpath along the boundary of the Quaid's mausoleum.



However, there are only two lanes on the track from Chipa Dastarkhawan to Gurumandir. The footpath here has not been removed to add an additional lane, causing severe traffic jams on a daily basis.  The road has even sunk in some places due to the construction work, following which the contractor has only filled it with sand without carpeting it.

According to Talat, the traffic police have requested the federal governed several times to cut down the footpath and carpet the road, but despite the passage of eight months, their requests have fallen on deaf ears.

Excuses, excuses

For his part, the KIDCL's Channa said there were three main reasons for the delays in the realisation of the project. According to the original plan, the road from Gurumandir to Municipal Park (Jama cloth) had to be constructed at an elevated level, but due to the objections of the Quaid-e-Azam Mazar Management Board, the structure was modified to be an underground one.

The federal government had finalised the design around nine months ago and when it awarded the contract and initiated the digging work, the Sindh government objected that in the future, the buses of the Red, Yellow and Blue Lines would pass through the same route and asked for a path to be provided for the other buses as well.

"Due to this objection, not only was the design changed again but the old contract was cancelled and a new contract was awarded, causing a lot of time to be wasted.

Channa said that the concerns of the mausoleum's management board and the Sindh government were genuine, which is why they had modified the designs.

The blame game

The provincial government blames the Centre for the delays in the project. The federal government should have taken the periphery of the Quaid's mausoleum into consideration and taken the provincial authorities on board, its officials say. The route maps of the red, Blue and Yellow Lines were shared with the KIDCL in various meetings and the same should have been taken into consideration when designing the Numaish underpass, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

An official of the Quaid-e-Azam Mazar Management Board told The Express Tribune that they had objected to the elevated structure on principle. According to a 1979 ordinance, any structure above 91 feet is banned within 1.2 kilometres of the Quaid's mazar.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 17^th, 2018.