Bus Rapid Transit project: Feasibility study to begin next month

The buses will run between the twin cities.

ISLAMABAD:

Even though the Capital Development Authority (CDA) seems to be in a rush to begin work on the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Project, which will be the city’s first mass transit system, it will have to go by the schedule chalked out by the financier.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has informed the civic agency that it will begin the process of carrying out a detailed feasibility study of the project in the first week of August. Following the civic agency’s request to conduct the study at the earliest and complete it by September, the ADB has said the feasibility study will take around four months to complete.



Meanwhile, the administration of the Rawalpindi city, which had refused to become part of the project last year, has also approached the Cities Development Initiatives for Asia -an ADB subsidiary - to carry out a pre-feasibility study of the project for Rawalpindi. The pre-feasibility study for Islamabad was done in November 2012 by ADB. The study was only carried out for Islamabad as the Punjab government had refused to become part of the project at the time.

ADB had told CDA that the venture would be more feasible if Rawalpindi were part of the project, otherwise, the authority would either have to subsidise bus fares or charge heavily from commuters.

In May, the ADB informed city managers that $0.25 million would be released by the end of June. “Now with the advent of financial year 2013-14, the promised amount has been allocated by ADB,” said a senior official. The study will cost $0.8 million. “Once the feasibility studies for both Rawalpindi and Islamabad are completed, the project will be initiated formally,” the official added.

Rawalpindi Commissioner Saad Rafique said he was unaware of any request made to Cities Development Initiatives for Asia, as the wing that completed the metro bus service in Lahore was overseeing the affairs of the BRT project for Rawalpindi.



A CDA official, when contacted, said during the pre-feasibility study of the BRT project for Islamabad, the routes for the buses were defined keeping in mind the inflow of commuters from Rawalpindi city. “The existing routes for Islamabad will be extended to Rawalpindi.”

He said it was premature to calculate the whole cost of the project, as elevated roads would be developed in Rawalpindi like in Lahore to run the bus service. In a pre-feasibility study for Islamabad the cost of the project was estimated around Rs7.5 billion.

Around 42,000 commuters travel in the federal capital every day. In the pre-feasibility study it was suggested that 48 multi-fuel buses should run on five intra-city routes in the first phase. A dedicated BRT Cell has already been established in CDA under its Planning and Design Wing.

However, a senior official said with the inclusion of Rawalpindi, decisions regarding the BRT project would be made by the Punjab government which is known to take swift action.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 7^th, 2013.