New buses

 

The long suffering Karachi commuters may soon get some relief. The Sindh government has recently announced it will run 1,000 new buses in the city. Soon the project would be extended to other parts of the province.

In the first phase, 60 buses would be brought on roads in 60 days. After two months, another 200 buses will be added to the fleet. The transport minister has said all buses will run on CNG and “will not stop running despite CNG outages.”

There is a long list of unmet promises. This raises doubts. Had promises been fulfilled, the present ugly state of affairs would not be there. In February this year, the transport minister had announced the launch of a bus service with a fleet of 200 buses.

In 2017, the chief minister had approved a plan to introduce 600 buses in Karachi and other areas of the province. In 2018, under the Peoples Bus Service, 10 microbuses were introduced in Karachi. These buses stopped plying after around a year in April this year. But this time around we are optimistic.

Now commuters have to wait for more than an hour to get a bus. On an average 5,000 new motorcycles are coming on the roads every day, adding to the congestion on roads. This is also causing accidents. A local train that was introduced from Karachi City Station to Dhabeji was discontinued in less than a year.


The train service had significantly benefited commuters and consequently reduced congestion on roads. Urdu satirist Fikr Taunsvi has written that public transport in the subcontinent is running 50 years late.

It is also necessary to introduce a civilised transport culture. Most drivers and conductors are rude. Drivers indulge in recklessly driving, and traffic cops act as mere spectators. Conductors bang doors with their hands.

Preventing over-speeding and introducing a whistle are not expensive. It has also been announced that the new buses will be air-conditioned. This makes us merry sans intermission.