PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has planned the start of work on the Bus Rapid Transit system in the provincial capital by Jan 2017 and its completion within a year.

It has also intended to put new buses on the city’s roads by November this year.

The details of these projects were shared in a recent meeting on the BRT project and new public transport system for Peshawar.

Official says project to be completed in a year

The meeting, which took place on Feb 26, was chaired by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.

According to officials in the know, transport secretary Zubair Azhar Qureshi told participants that the Asian Development Bank had completed the pre-feasibility study of the project in April 2004 recommending the construction of five mass transit corridors in the provincial capital during the next 10 years.

The minutes of the meeting available with Dawn show under the pre-feasibility study, the Corridor 2 running from Chamkani to Karkhano Market via the GT Road and Jamrud Road is the priority corridor.

The estimated cost of the street-level BRT system is Rs11.615 billion and that of partially elevated BRT system Rs17.97 billion.

The cost also includes Rs4.75 billion for acquiring 75 buses for BRT fleet, setting up command and control centre, and installing ticketing and security systems and CCTV cameras.

The proposed alignment of the Corridor 2 shows option of passing it through Zakori Bridge on GT Road to Qila Balahisar, then elevated segment to Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Khyber Bazaar and Dabgari and then overhead to Deans Plaza at start of the Peshawar Cantonment.

From Deans, the BRT will run through the pedestrianised Saddar Bazaar and will have another elevated segment from Qayyum Stadium to Tehkal and from there to Hayatabad will proceed on ground with elevated U-turns for other traffic for ground segments.

The meeting decided that PC-1 for the establishment of the project management unit should be placed before the Provincial Development Working Party and cleared by March 2016 and that the hiring of staff should be completed in three months.

The minutes note that the KP Urban Mobility Authority Act will be passed from assembly and efforts will be made to recruit the core staff for the authority, while the planning and development department will issue a letter to the Asian Development Bank showing willingness of the government for Rs1 billion loan for the project design advance and detailed engineering design.

The feasibility study of the project is likely to be completed by July 2016 and that PC-1 for the mass transit project Corridor 2 to be made at the estimated costs worked out in this study will be submitted to the PDWP, Central Development Working Party (CDWP) and Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) for early approval.

“The estimated date for the project’s clearance is Dec 2016 otherwise the whole project will not completed until Dec 2017,” the minutes note.

The meeting also decided that the Peshawar Development Authority would be the executing agency for the project and that it would shortlist and pre-qualify contractors and consultants in consultation with the ADB.

According to the minutes, the detailed designs and bidding documents will be ready by Nov 2016. The ADB consultants will submit detailed designs to the PDA for tendering.

The officials said interestingly, the transport secretary informed the meeting about the ‘realistic and optimistic’ timeline for the project.

They said under the realistic timeline, the project’s completion was likely to take place around Sept 2018, while the optimistic timeline put the date at Dec 31, 2017.

The officials said the meeting was also told that the buses would be introduced on various routes of Peshawar by November this year.

A senior government official in the know said that the chief minister was eager to see the BRT system in place during his tenure in office and that he had made it clear to all those associated for the project.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2016