PESHAWAR: TransPeshawar, the operator of the government-owned Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit service, has ordered 24 new buses saying the initiative comes in light of the growing ridership.

The buses will be added to the TransPeshawar fleet soon, according to spokesperson Sadaf Kamil.

“The new buses are likely to arrive in the city in the next couple of weeks. They will be 12 meters long and will be used in off-corridor routes,” she told Dawn on Friday.

The spokesperson said that initially, the company operated 158 buses on different corridors of the bus service but got 62 more buses towards the end of 2021.

She also said that TransPeshawar would operate buses on the new Super Express route from Chamkani to Mall of Hayatabad in the next few days.

Mr Sadaf said that the new route would cater to the growing number of commuters, who used the express services, which stopped at a few stations only instead of every station.

Says more routes on the cards

“There is a huge influx of commuters on the ER-1 corridor, which even goes higher in the morning and evening,” she said.

The spokesperson said that the new route would operate from 7:30am to 4pm with a 30 minutes commute.

She said that the route would have five stops including Chamkani, Sardar Ghari, Malik Saad Shaheed, University of Peshawar and Mall of Hayatabad stations.

Ms Sadaf also said that another new route called the ER-4 would soon

be operated from Chamkani to Malik Saad Shaheed via Ring Road and Charsadda Road.

Also, another new route will be from Hayatabad to Phase-VI terminal via Phase I.

According to her, two more routes have been planned from Pabbi to Malik Saad Shaheed and from Regi Model Town to Amn Chowk. However, both routes are likely to take some time to become functional due to the ongoing civil work and infrastructure-related development.

The company recently launched the ER-12 route from the Shah Alam Pul on Charsadda Road up to the Mall of Hayatabad.

“The bus service on this route has 10,000 commuters daily,” she said.

The spokesperson said the company had the DR-3 route in the same area.

She said that following the launch of the ER-12 route, DR-3 ridership dropped by 2,000 per day but the former ridership went up to 10,000 per day.

“This new route has added 8,000 new commuters to the BRT service,” she said.

Ms Sadaf said that 20-25 buses operated on the route, while 12 were added to the other routes. She said that the company, which operated 11 routes on its network, had 307,353 commuters daily in the New Year.

“Our daily ridership stood at 237,000 per day in December last year,” she said.

The spokesperson said that women commuters had increased from two per cent to 20 per cent, while the ridership had crossed the 137 million mark.

She said that TransPeshawar had reduced the bicycle security fee from Rs3,000 to Rs1,000 for “people’s convenience.”

Ms Sadaf said the Peshawar BRT, which was launched in August 2002 by former prime minister Imran Khan, was recently declared the first Gold Standard BRT Service in the Subcontinent, third in Asia and seventh in the world by the International BRT Standard Technical Committee.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2023