KARACHI: Panelists comprising architects, horticulturists, heritage conservationists and government representatives at The Second Floor on Thursday raised awareness of the benefits and possible challenges posed by the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project proposed for the city.

While talking about the urban planning prospective, architect Arif Belgaumi said Karachi was increasing in population quite rapidly and the greater movement of the people was away from the centre to places such as Surjani, Orangi, etc, where they had created colonies. But lack of facilities, schools and jobs brought up the need for them to travel back to the main city for these things, meaning that they needed a good transit system. But he said he was worried that since all the six bus lines proposed weren’t owned by the same entities, there might be an issue of synchronisation.

Ronald de Souza of Shehri said that the infrastructure costs included the construction of stations, bridges, etc, but not the buses that would be moving along the routes. “Then when travelling on level ground, underground and on elevated tracks brings up different costs. In Karachi, the high voltage power lines are also in the middle of the road bringing up more expenditures,” he said, adding that the people living in the areas through which the transit system would pass might not even use it. “It will be used more by the people who come to work in these areas such as cooks and gardeners,” he added.

Another issue raised by him was that all the current means of public transportation were businesses, earning more than they spent. “But transport systems in most places in the world are subsidised.”

Taking the examples of New York and Chicago, he said if those cities didn’t put money into their transport system, their cities would shut down. “There are economic gains from a good transport system,” he said.

Talking about the heritage aspect of the project, Sohail Ahmed Kalhoro said there were several heritage buildings which also happened to be important landmarks on the route of the projects. “The Green Line takes off from Numaish, which happens to be one of the older parts of the city with many heritage buildings but no one has approached the heritage committee working under the Sindh Cultural Heritage Act of 1994 for any kind of approval regarding construction around them,” he said.

To this Arif Belgaumi added that when dealing with a heritage building you were actually dealing with a heritage site. “You have to preserve not just a building but its environs also. So any construction that might hurt the environs of a heritage building is not allowed,” he said, adding that the roads along the routes also shouldn’t become so congested that there was no room for emergency vehicles such as fire tenders and ambulances to reach any building there.

Meanwhile, speaking from the horticultural viewpoint, Rafiul Haq, member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said that on the 18 kilometres to 22km route of the transit system there were some 19,000 different plant species. He said some people believed that transplanting these trees elsewhere was a solution. “But,” he said, transplanting is like surgery and is the surgeon even competent to perform that surgery?”

He said the timing of carrying out transplantations was also a concern as autumn was never a good time to do it. “Besides, who picks up the cost of transplanting so many trees. Is the money for it going to be coming from the exchequer?” he said. “In the long run, we as a people will pay for the environmental degradation we are responsible for.”

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2016