Orange Line Metro Train

The Orange Line Metro Train in Lahore began its test run on Dec 10. After three months of test run, the metro trains will likely start their commercial operation from March next. This is an encouraging development in a country where rapid mass transit system is non-existent in cities. The metro trains will travel a 27.1-km route of which 25.4 kilometres are elevated and the rest is underground. With 26 stations, it will initially handle 250,000 commuters daily. The entire operation of the electric trains will be controlled via computers. Orange Line is the first transport project of its kind to be completed under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. It was envisaged in 2013 by the then PML-N government in Punjab led by Shehbaz Sharif. Construction work on the project stopped for more than a year due to long litigation at the Lahore High Court and the supreme court.

Now we hope that work on the stalled rapid bus transit projects in Karachi and Peshawar will resume and harried commuters in these cities too will be facilitated. In Karachi, public transport is facing near-collapse. Once the city had local trains under the name of circular railway. Time and again the authorities have made several announcements for their revival, but so far nothing tangible has happened.

Cities in developed countries and most developing countries have local trains to facilitate commuters. The London underground, also known as the Tube, began operating in 1863. Some parts of it is overground. Local trains and underground railways facilitate commuters greatly. There is a special kind of romance attached to railway journey. It has prompted books and poems. Paul Theroux wrote The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Petagonian Express; Robert Louis Stevenson penned the poem From A Railway Carriage, which begins with these inspiring lines: “Faster than fairies, faster than witches/Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches.” We hope the people of Lahore will jealously guard their local trains.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2019.

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