WE are building mass transit systems in Karachi and Peshawar now. We should have done this decades ago.

All Pakistani cities are expanding fast, with consequent population pressures on all urban facilities – housing, water, power, sanitation, education, health and transport. What I suggest is that we should start formulating mass transit plans for cities which are still not very big — cities like Sialkot, Gujranwala, Quetta, Hyderabad and Sukkur. A time will come when these cities will be having huge populations, with vast built-up areas, as in Karachi and Lahore. Built-up areas demand demolition of some existing structures. This adds to the cost and dislocates life.

Laying an underground railway is easier now than in the future. Building over-ground mass transit systems – of the kind we have in Lahore and Multan and of the kind being executed in Karachi and Peshawar — will create huge problems for the people. Therefore common sense demands that cities which are still not as big as Karachi and Lahore should have underground mass transit systems, for which planning should begin now.

Karachi missed the bus in the sixties when there was all-round development in Pakistan during the Ayub regime. Now an underground system for Karachi is out of the question. Consequently the construction of over-ground bus lines in Karachi is proceeding at a snail’s pace, because this has necessitated the demolition of many bridges, etc.

To save the smaller cities the same fate, the government should start working on building underground railway systems for the cities mentioned above.

Hafiz Hakeemi
Gujranwala

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2018