Lahore to get OMT, Karachi content with three-wheelers

[Salman]

KARACHI: Lahore is witnessing the futurist plan of the Orange Line Metro Train, while the largest city of Pakistan is still at ease with its orange-coloured Qingqi.

The provincial government has shown lukewarm interest in the mass transit projects of the city and is least interested in the repair of an old and vital Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) track and making it functional.

Vision, commitment and honesty of political leadership work wonders in rapid socio-economic change of the society. The role of modern communication facilities in urban development could not be undermined. All developed urban cities have progressed and are prosperous because of heavy investment in public transport.

The rulers of Punjab have realised that modern facilities of commuting are key to urban development and after the successful Metro bus project, giving Lahore the gift of Orange Line Metro Train.

The orange line is an under construction Lahore Metro network. Once completed, it would connect Raiwind, Multan Road, McLeod Road, Lahore Railway Junction and the Grand Trunk Road. It will be the first line of the Lahore Metro, which is country’s first mass rapid transit train system. It is financed and developed by the Chinese government as a part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) through the export and import bank of China. The corridor will be capable of accommodating two trains running both up and down the track, ferrying up to 30,000 passengers per hour.

The architecture, construction and operation of the orange line have been entrusted to the Chinese government and the estimated completion time is 27 months. The project was initiated with a signed agreement between the governments of Pakistan and China in May 2014. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif signed the agreement at a ceremony witnessed by President Mamnoon Hussain and the Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The project was started 15 months after the inauguration of Pakistan’s first rapid transit of buses, Lahore Metro bus. The project will cost $1.6 billion and is under construction, to be completed by October 2017.

The Orange Line Metro Train will run on a 27- kilometre track, of which 25.4 kilometres will be elevated. The service will initially benefit around 250,000 passengers a day. The capacity will be increased to 500,000 passengers a day by 2025. The Punjab government says that the metro bus, the metro train would be implemented in other cities after Lahore.

Even, the government of Balochistan has approved a mass transit train plan that will run between Kuchlak and Spizand railway stations. Stations will be built after every five kilometres on the track, which would be state-of-the-art while parks and trade zones would also be built along the track. The implementation of the project would provide people with a cheap travelling option and also decrease air pollution. The working paper of the train project would be furnished by February 15th and the project would be completed within six months to a year.

Sadly in Karachi, millions of commuters are compelled to commute in Qingqi. Commuters say that these yellow-orange coloured makeshift motorcycle rickshaws are their metro buses and trains, as without them the urban commuting system in the metropolis goes paralysed.

Karachi has an equipped track of the KCR, which could be repaired not in years but weeks and local trains could successfully run on it within a couple of months, provided the government of Sindh cooperates with the Pakistan Railway to make the KCR functional. The repair of the KCR and running of local trains on it would facilitate millions of commuters but the rulers of Sindh instead of going for a simple and cost-effective solution of repairing the KCR are going for foreign loans to reconstruct it, which is a very costly and time consuming option.

The rulers of Punjab have chosen the metro buses and metro trains for Lahore while the rulers of Sindh are still content with Qingqi as hundreds of thousands of these run in the city, Karachi is known as the Chung Chi City of the world. However, it is up to the government to change its public transport options and give the city a respectable public transport system.

The provincial government should seriously think about an urgent repair of the KCR with the assistance of the Pakistan Railway to give some relief to the city commuters. It can revolutionise the road-based urban transport by banning minibuses and coaches and giving liberal concessions to the transporters to ply wide-bodied buses on the streets of Karachi.