KARACHI: The people of Karachi may have missed the public transport system boat long ago when the tramways were yanked out in the early 1970s and the circular railway was discontinued in the late 1990s, but we may still catch the bus, or rather the green bus!
The animated video introducing Karachi’s Green Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system is nice but until we can reach that point where the bus actually moves up and down its designated route in a neat, clean and green environment, we have to tolerate dusty dug-up midsection along the roads from Gurumandir to Nagan Chowrangi.
“Of course, it would be great when and if the project is completed. I say this because here we have seen so many projects started by the government for the betterment of the people which after years of dragging on are then shelved,” said a young woman trying to cross the road a couple of kilometres ahead of Gurumandir lined with mounds of dug-up earth, piles of bricks and construction iron bars wound together, with overflowing gutters to add to her everyday challenges. A board with the ‘Caution — entering construction zone’ signboard first appears here, if you are coming from that end.
It is said that the elevated section of the Green Line BRT appearing above various intersections along its route would be 11.7 kilometres long while the tracks on the ground are 7.7km long and mostly run along the middle of the broad Sher Shah Suri Road.
At New Golimar, the cars unlucky to be there at the wrong time and wrong place wait for hours in a crazy traffic jam while the motorbikes zigzag and climb over the narrow dusty paths between the heaps of mud.
Up ahead, an old and abandoned underpass project at Nazimabad Chowrangi is back on track with work on it clashing with the work under way for the BRT project.
“It is sheer chaos around here,” said Mohammad Shahid, a rickshaw driver parked with several other rickshaws along a roundabout with an old PAF fighter jet, drillers and diggers. “Manoeuvring around this maze, looking for a way out, I see people every day getting extremely confused and completely lost. They all come to us for directions,” he said. “If they could just remove the dugout mud, things could improve. The mud with all this construction material and heavy machinery creates too much congestion.”
There will be 22 bus stations and separate lanes for coming and going along the route. Work at various sections is being done in phases. Somewhere the work is just starting and somewhere it has progressed. For instance, the engineers supervising concrete being poured over a part of foundation for the elevated section at Nazimabad Chowrangi said that they began work in that area in February and were expected to complete that portion by Feb, 2017. “Ideally, it will take one year, but may go beyond that date, too, as normally happens,” said Ibad Amin, one of the consultant engineers there.
And then as you proceed up the path along the project, you run into a dead-end at Board Office, where the construction work has spread and taken over the entire main road. This is where Surjani and Orangi routes would be unifying. There has been more progress in the construction work this side as labourers sprinkle water on the shuttering atop the beams.
To find your way in this concrete jungle, you take to the back roads to emerge a bit ahead on Sher Shah Suri Road. Further up, most pillars are in place near the Sakhi Hasan Chowrangi.
“Yes, the green bus project, although messy, is well on its way. But what happens when this project, taken on by the federal government, is completed and the others such as the Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange and Indigo lines, which are the responsibility of the provincial government and other entities are not even started?” one wise person observing the construction work questioned.
Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2016