OLMT on tracks

The Orange Line Metro Train, Pakistan’s first state of the art metro train, is finally on the tracks — inaugurated on Sunday by Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar. Envisaged in December 2013 by the PML-N government as a project of CPEC, the electricity-run train took seven years to complete, having undergone delays: first, due to long litigation at the country’s superior courts and then due to fresh tendering of the contract concerning operation and maintenance by the PTI government which had doubts over the process that had been finalised by its predecessors. However, now the country’s first computer-controlled train has started chugging along a 27.1km track, cutting the travel duration between the starting and the culminating point to 45 minutes from the previous 150. The train runs with a frequency of five minutes; and a single train, having five bogies, can carry one thousand people, 300 of whom will have seat available.

The Lahore metro train is indeed one-of-its-kind thing in Pakistan, but it’s exceedingly big a piece for our purse. While this gift for the citizens of Lahore has already cost a huge 200 billion rupees — an amount twice as much as what the federal government has pledged for the development of ex-Fata region and four times as much as the KMC’s annual budget — it will cost the national kitty twelve billion rupees annually in terms of subsidy on the fare. The Rs40 ticket for a traveller will actually cost the government Rs274. The project does not go in sync with the general infrastructure development in the country, and stands starkly alone like a plush mansion amid shanties. For a country where service delivery, concerning health and education in particular, is taken for granted, such a gigantic project runs the risk of turning into a white elephant. Let’s hope that does not turn out to be the case, and Lahorites keeping having a smooth journey.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27^th, 2020.

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