Bus route closures exacerbated public transport problem

Transporters bemoan lack of provincial government support in helping fix lack of accessibility

KARACHI:

Even though the country’s most populous city recently got a new bus service, years of prioritising cars over buses for the masses means that its public transportation woes are far from over.

Over the span of some 14 years, about 380 routes of public transport have been closed in the booming metropolis that is Karachi. Presently, buses, minibuses, and coaches only operate on 80 routes, according to documents obtained from the Sindh Transport Department. Consequently, for a city which has a population of more than 16 million and there are roughly 7 million passenger trips per day, as per surveys carried out by Karachi Mass Transit Cell, sights like passengers travelling on the rooftops of buses are common. President of Karachi Transport Ittehad Union, Irshad Bukhari, while talking about the decline in public transport options over the years, said, “Up until 2010 we had 25,000 buses, minibuses, coaches, but due to consistently poor policies of the Sindh government many transporters stopped doing business.”

Bukhari opined that a mixture of the government favouring cars and illegal rickshaws operating around the city had resulted in the city now having only 6,000 buses. “The Sindh government should have provided loans and subsidies to transporters so that we could have improved the public transport system,” Bukhari remarked. A report by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) estimates that to fix Karachi’s transport problems 8,000 new buses should be run as a short-term fix and the Karachi Circular Railway and other mass transit projects should be completed under a long-term policy. Despite JICA’s estimates, there has been a consistent decline in the number of buses in Karachi due to bus route closures.

Sindh Transport Department’s data reveals that out of 60 routes for big buses, only 16 are operational; out of 234 minibus routes only 42 are operational; and out of 70 routes for coaches only 20 are operational now.

The Express Tribune asked transporters about the consistent decline in buses and all of them were in unison in stating that new investment was rare due to increasing fuel costs.  Secretary of the provincial Transport Department, Aleem Sheikh, said, “we have imported 236 red buses and 50 electric buses under the Peoples Bus Service and also plan to bring 400 more buses. Development work on Karachi Circular Railway, Redline Bus, and Bus Rapid Transit system is underway,” Sheikh told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2022.