Another metro bus

Anybody who has endured the daily misery of commuting between Rawalpindi and Islamabad is likely to welcome the inauguration of a bus-based mass-transit project for the city. In broad terms, we also welcome the possibility of reducing the difficulties faced by commuters but there will inevitably be comparisons with the first metro bus launched in Pakistan, in Lahore. The Rawalpindi-Islamabad project is budgeted at Rs44.21 billion and it is projected to be finished within 10 months; and once finished, another project will be started in Multan. The Sharif government is much enamoured of transport infrastructure projects. There is to be a Karachi motorway and an Islamabad-Muzzaffarabad rail link and the new Islamabad airport — admittedly not a project begun by the current dispensation — is to be brought on stream. Talk of a metro bus project in Karachi has died down of late but the plan is still on the table.

All of these projects, if properly executed and subsequently managed, probably benefit the economy in the widest sense. The devil is in the details. The Lahore metro bus is reportedly running at a loss of five million rupees a day and has eaten around Rs1.6 billion of public money since its inception in February 2013. There are about 140,000 users over the five-day week — a number well below a break-even point even if government figures are accepted as accurate. It was, perhaps, a slight embarrassment that the Punjab chief minister felt obliged to complain at the inaugural ceremony that the 50/50 cost-sharing formula for the project was not to the advantage of the province of which he is the CM. There was no mention of the additional burden of subsidy from provincial budgets if fares are to be kept at an affordable rate. The prime minister quickly promised additional funds presumably from the federal pocket, but who-funds-what remains a contentious issue. Nobody doubts that mass-transit in our cities is the need of the hour. Many doubt how we are going about the job.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2014.

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