SEVERE LACK OF PUBLIC CONSULTATION: ASSUMPTION OVER PLANNING CYCLE

After the BRT project was first announced, there was a glaring lack of public consultation during the planning and design stages. All design details were kept confidential and not divulged.

The only open public consultation — that too for only a few hours — was conducted in the summer of 2017 to meet the requirements of Environmental Impact Assessment.

The design never made it to the public domain. Nor was there any discussion of the potential impact that the BRT will have on businesses, properties or traffic.

There are many wild theories floating around about the Peshawar BRT. An urban transport solutions expert separates the myths from the realities...

In fact, most stakeholders were not aware of the loss of property, business, parking, service roads and green spaces. The lack of public awareness is evident in recent protests over design, and hence, the reactive changes.

TRAFFIC WOES AND PUBLIC SUFFERING

Absent in Peshawar today is a traffic management plan while work continues on the BRT.

Traffic in Peshawar typically moves at a snail’s pace and huge queues form in peak hours. Because of construction work, the only arterial road that serves major health, educational and commercial institutions and provides linkages with other parts of the city has been left in shambles.

But while traffic management is failing miserably today, the big worry is that this situation will not change post-construction either. With 18-metre-wide stations and U-turns introduced in the centre of roads, there is not enough space left to provide traffic lanes, bike lanes and footpaths. This will cause traffic bottlenecks at many points.

The removal of service roads, green spaces and parking along the corridor will further exacerbate the current traffic woes. The system could have been designed differently so as to allow the passage of general traffic as well as provide a sustainable transport service.

PLANNING AND DESIGN WORK: DISASTER IN THE MAKING!

During a high-level meeting with the British head of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), as the timeframe of the entire 28-kilometre-long corridor came up, the ADB chief was amazed over the logic of extreme haste in pushing through a sensitive project. He argued that a much shorter route in London would have taken more than a year of deliberations, public hearings, input from design and engineering experts, interactions with civil society, government agencies and regularity authorities etc to prepare a master plan.

Obviously, extreme haste took precedence over careful planning; political expediency won the day. In consequence, common sense and pragmatic decisions lost the day!

Only five months were allocated for the detailed design with a budget of 400 million rupees for a project that includes 31 stations, eight kilometres of elevated sections, three kilometres of underpasses, a 27-kilometre track and two major bus storage and maintenance facilities, that will house more than 220 buses.

The errors in assumptive design are now evident during the implementation stage. For example, the design was changed from an on-ground bus track to elevated sections in the neighbourhoods of Gulbahar and Tehkal after protests from residents and local jirgas.

But perpetual changes to design have also resulted in significant work, including erection and demolition of piers, having to be redone at an additional cost. The underpass at Aman Chowk, for example, was completely reworked due to the lack of simultaneous space for two buses. The design was flawed enough to overlook the well-known Shahi Khatta (the central and historic Mughal period main sanitation line) along GT Road.

The change in the design during construction resulted in extension of the elevated section from eight kilometres to 16 kilometres. But this will now run an additional cost of six to eight billion rupees (1.5 kilometres elevated Bab-e-Peshawar Flyover has been built with 1.6 billion rupees).

There are many questions raised on the poor quality of hasty work on a fast-tracked project. The design flaws and faulty workmanship and construction material shall manifest itself in the coming years. Due to poor planning and design, the project is prone to more changes which will eventually result in delays, cost over-runs and loss of productivity.

SUBSIDY FREE BRT — A MIRAGE!

A novel term of “4th generation BRT” and “subsidy-free public transit system” is being coined. In other words, the project was sold to public as a profitable venture. The reality is more complex.

The financial statement in PC-1 of the BRT project shows cash flows of earning and annual net profit that will not only cover operating expenses but also pay off 45 billion rupees that was taken as loan from the ADB (5 billion escalations due to recent depreciation of the rupee in the international market).

Intra-city public mass transit systems around the globe are highly subsidised services. The populous and dense cities of Beijing, Shanghai, New York and London offer 40 percent to 60 percent subsidy on operating cost. There are few cities such as Tokyo and Hong Kong with dense vertical growth that claim subsidy-free public transport, but their transit agencies are given additional authority to collect property and business tax. Hence, the local tax is hidden in the revenue stream.

Similar examples of subsidised systems in Pakistan are Islamabad-Rawalpindi, Multan and Lahore Metros. Lahore Metro is a popular service with jam packed space, but despite this, the relevant authority has given a subsidy of 1.8 billion rupees for 27 kilometres and 70 buses.

It is not possible for an air-conditioned service with a well-dressed driver to meet all its expenses on 55 rupees (end-to-end fare announced by KP officials) for a 30-kilometre-long service. Besides running a transit service, other costs such as government employees, offices, maintenance of infrastructure and rolling stock also adds up to the total operational cost.

The Peshawar BRT has 50 buses on the main line and 170 buses on 68-kilometre feeder lines. Currently, there is no provision in the project to make any improvements to feeder routes except developing stops (shelters). Out of 220 buses, 170 buses are planned to ply on feeder lines and these buses will be at the mercy of daily traffic jams that will increase the travel time and cost of operations substantially.

The government of KP will need an estimated seven billion rupees per annum in subsidy and debt servicing. This shows the fiscal imprudence for a province with approximately 120 billion rupees in the annual development budget. The BRT project alone will burden the provincial exchequer with 45 billion rupees in loan and an annual payment of 7 billion rupees.

The writer is a professional engineer based in Canada. He can be reached at waqar_syed@msn.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 13th, 2018