En route: Mass transit to come to Islamabad via Pindi

CDA aims to collaborate with Punjab govt for financing twin cities’ bus service.

ISLAMABAD:

The much awaited Rawalpindi-Islamabad metro bus project may finally see the light of day as a senior official of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) confirmed an allocation of Rs30 billion by the federal government.

CDA Traffic Engineering Director Azam Lodhi said the Asian Development Bank’s Cities Development Initiative Asia department has completed the pre-feasibility study of the project and added that the final feasibility report will be completed by next month. Lodhi further said that tenders would be floated soon in the international media to invite bids for establishing the transport system.

A senior CDA official said the issue of mass transit system was taken up by the CDA board in a meeting on Monday.

He said that as the authority failed to introduce a practical transport service through its own resources, it was decided to link the project with Rawalpindi to acquire financial assistance from the Punjab government.



He said CDA chairman and board members showed their consent to take up the matter with the Punjab government as they have recently launched a similar service in Lahore. He further said the Planning Wing of CDA has marked out places for bus stations in the capital for this project.

The authority had announced the launching of a mass transit system several times but financial constraints had restrained it from doing so, till now. “Finally this dream seems to be materialising as the federal government has allocated a hefty amount for the project in this year’s budget,” the official stated.

The amount, allocated through PSDP, is for infrastructure projects that are fully, or in some cases largely, funded by the federal government using its own resources.

However, it is not yet clear whether the federal or the Punjab government will bear the cost of the project in Rawalpindi.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2013.