FORMER mayor of Bogotá Enrique Penalosa had a point when he said at a seminar in Karachi the other day that high-speed signal-free highways would not necessarily rid the city of its mounting traffic woes. The number of vehicles, he warned, would rise in time to fill — in fact clog — the expanded roads, leaving the environment even more polluted and causing the government to run up a more massive fuel import bill. Clearly, a long-term solution is needed. Times without number this newspaper has made an impassioned plea for the revival of the city's circular railway, which in the mid-1980s operated over 100 trains and was used by around six million passengers every year. Neglected by successive governments pursuing skewed urban transport priorities, the rail-based mass transit system collapsed in the late 1990s when the number of trains dropped to a disappointing two.

However, the hope that the Karachi circular railway might be up and running were rekindled recently when the Central Development Working Party, which has the authority of approving projects submitted by various ministries, decided that the Rs52.3bn KCR project would be executed within three years. The government is expecting the foreign component of the investment — raised by a key Japanese government agency — to be Rs39.2bn. The circular railway would have the capacity for carrying 700,000 passengers daily using over 240 eight-coach electric trains. The 50-kilometre dual-track railway project would have 23 underpasses and overhead bridges — bypassing the current 18 level crossings — and 23 stations in the city. The Karachi Urban Transport Corporation, which is the executing agency of the KCR, is said to be currently in the process of undertaking an environment impact assessment of the project.

It has been argued that one of the reasons why the circular railway fell by the wayside in the past was that it gradually became inaccessible to commuters who took up residence in newly established localities not linked by the rail loop. This problem is being overcome by laying a six-kilometre-long track to the existing circular railway infrastructure connecting the Jinnah Terminal with the Drigh Road station and running buses to the rail stations. Like most mega-cities, Karachi needs and deserves a rail-based mass transit system. It is about time the city took a first step in this direction.