ISLAMABAD: Apart from officials overseeing the metro bus project, few others are ready to believe that the mass transit system, which has become the bane of twin cities’ existence in recent months, will be finished by the end of January as promised.

Between August and November, the continuing sit-ins and protests on the capital’s streets gave the project a reason for the delays incurred. But with so much left to be done, even as the government’s self-imposed Jan 31, 2014 deadline looms, project managers appear confident that they will get things done on time.

Contractors working on the project told Dawn that the political uncertainty that plagued the capital for nearly four months in the shape of the protests by the PTI and Pakistan Awami Tehreek cost them dearly.

Hanif Abbasi, the chairman of the Metro Bus Implementation and Monitoring Committee, blames the protests for most of the project’s problems. “Machinery and workers were sitting idle at the site for weeks when the sit-ins were in town,” he says.

Peshawar Mor interchange a major stumbling block, Punjab govt ignored earlier CDA plan

This is ironic, since a substantial stumbling block in the metro’s path has been the chairman’s erstwhile stance over the final shape of the Peshawar Mor interchange.

Originally, Mr Abbasi wanted all work on the interchange – being conducted by Nespak – to be completed by the Jan 31 deadline. Only recently has he relented in the face of insurmountable challenges, and now says that while the underpass for use by the metro bus will be completed within the stipulated timeframe, work on other lanes and exit and entry ramps and a flyover at the interchange would continue beyond the deadline. This is all an attempt to make Peshawar Mor a signal-free interchange. However, a senior official of the Capital Development Authority’s (CDA) engineering department told Dawn on condition of anonymity that work on the interchange was unlikely to finish before the last quarter of 2015.

Rollercoaster ride

The metro bus’ route through Islamabad can best be described as a ‘rollercoaster ride’. Upon entering city limits via 9th Avenue, the bus will cross Peshawar Mor through an underpass, while traffic heading north and south on Kashmir Highway would ply on a flyover.

Up until Jinnah Avenue, the metro bus would run along 9th Avenue on a separate lane, crossing intersection of the thoroughfares via another underpass and returning to road-level for nearly the entire length of Jinnah Avenue. Then, at China Chowk, the bus would again enter a series of underpasses, which will take it right past Constitution Avenue to emerge at the Pakistan Secretariat. This is one of the main reasons the near 14km route is costing the government an estimated Rs24 billion to build.

In contrast to this complicated route, the CDA was already working on its own plan for a mass transit project, which officials say not only would be cheaper to build, but would have caused commuters far less inconvenience than what they currently have to endure.

“Everybody will continue to suffer, all because of the faulty design of the route,” the CDA official said, “These issues were raised before the project was started, but the Punjab government was not prepared to listen.”

“Not only was the cost of infrastructure development for the bus route proposed by CDA substantially lower, there would have been comparatively lesser environmental damage had the original plan been followed,” the official from the engineering wing said.

CDA had originally suggested that the bus run on ground level and ply on a separate lane, in the centre of 9th Avenue right up to the Ibne Sina Road junction. The total cost of turning that section into a signal-free corridor was estimated by the authority to be around Rs15 billion.

The CDA’s design had the bus running along Ibne Sina Road and then Fazle Haq Road, to emerge at the edge of the Red Zone. This route terminated in front of Parliament Lodges and would not have entailed any changes to the geography of Constitution Avenue.

But this plan was rejected by Nespak and the current project managers. “Building a track in the middle of 9th Avenue would mean that all the three bridges that cross the road would have to be rebuilt,” Rawalpindi Commissioner Zahid Saeed, who is also the director for the metro bus project, rold Dawn.

Though designers saved around Rs1 billion in doing so, they are spending Rs1.5 billion rebuilding parts of the existing bridges, as well as shifting roadside services such as pedestrian bridges and uprooting hundreds of trees.

Long-term plans

Hanif Abbasi, though, is unfazed. He waves off criticism of the project, saying that naysayers were comparing the project to a simple bus lane.

“We are working on establishing a dedicated bus track, that can even be converted into a train service,” he said, adding, “We will be taking the metro bus to Tarnol and Rawat to connect other parts of Islamabad as well.”

With an annual subsidy of Rs1.5 billion, Mr Abbasi is confident that the bus service will be a success story.

“Those who opposed motorway are using it now – same way even if we are not in government there will be public pressure to continue this welfare project.”

In addition to these criticisms, a comparison of the numbers (see table) with other ambitious mass transit projects shows that the Rawalpindi-Islamabad metro bus project is quite expensive, even by international standards.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2014