Some good news for Karachi

Finally, some good news for the people of Karachi. Prime Minister Imran Khan inaugurated the city’s much-delayed Green Line Bus Rapid Transport System (GL-BRTS) last Friday. The ‘Green Line’, as it is popularly called, has the capacity to cater to the needs of 135,000 commuters. The introduction of this service will bring a sigh of relief to thousands of commuters of the city who usually had no option but to use personal means like motorcycles or cars, other than the rag-tag public transport system or the erratic and unreliable app-based transport services, to move from one part of the city to another.

Now the challenge is for the BRTS to live up to expectations and run efficiently given that there are a number of vested interests in the city who desperately want it to fail. This isn’t just about the famed transport mafia, which has run circles around many governments and planners in the past, but also about the negative role played by different political parties and successive provincial and federal governments who purposely diverted funds away from Karachi and deprived the city of a functional public transport system. This is also about a provincial police force and transport department that earn millions from the public transport mafia and also about local politicians and other power brokers who benefit from the misery of the common public.

The BRTS has to succeed. Public transport remains a politically charged issue in this city. The 1986 riots after the killing of student Bushra Zaidi under the wheels of a mini-bus is well remembered by people of the city as when the city fell into an abyss. The incident sparked a wave of political violence in the city from which Karachi never fully recovered. The people of Karachi have for decades cried for a decent, safe and affordable public transport system. They have been given everything but this. The failure of the two major political parties of the province — the PPP and the MQM — to put together such a system suggests that there was a lot at play. Where did they go wrong?

As regards mass transit in Karachi, the city has seen false hopes and indefinitely delayed projects. The Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) which was supposed to come into being through a hefty Japanese investment is still nowhere in sight. Pakistan Railways started the KCR in 1969 but discontinued the service in 1999 due to heavy losses. More recently, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the KCR to be restarted. But aside from one section that has been operationalised, the only other effect the so-called re-opening has had is the displacement of thousands of people who had encroached on the railway line along the way.

In between, we have been hearing about one mass transit system or another with nothing really materialising. Now the city has some sort of system in place, regardless of the fact that it serves the residents of only one side of the city. It is still a beginning. What is interesting about this project, say observers, is that in contrast to the metro-bus projects of Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi, the Karachi project has not attracted controversy or charges of graft. The Green Line project was overseen by the Centre-led Sindh Infrastructure Development Company (SIDCL) which was accused by the Sindh government of exceeding its constitutional bounds as it is a federal entity and transport is a provincial subject. The on-ground reality remains that the SIDCL completed the 25km track of the Green Line within budget and thanks to the intervention of the federal government, we also saw the resolution of the issue of procurement of buses. The project cost Rs35.5 billion and is being termed a cost-effective, citizen-friendly project at a time when this city of more than 20 million people had no functional public transport system. In contrast, Lahore has two public transport systems (Bus and Rail) while Islamabad, Peshawar and Multan have all inaugurated BRTS over the years.

At least someone has delivered and not just made promises it did not keep. The next step now would be for the people of Karachi to ensure that the system flourishes in the days to come. An efficient public transport system will change the dynamics of Pakistan’s largest city and help bring down both travel times and pollution levels. Let us hope for more good news.

 

 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2021.

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