Islamabad December 5 2021:Prime Minister Imran Khan will inaugurate Karachi’s first modern transport system, green line BRT, on Friday.
This was announced by Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar in a tweet on Sunday.
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The project was undertaken by Government of Pakistan/ Ministry of Communications as a high priority project as determined by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in their Feasibility Study conducted for Karachi Transportation Improvement Project (KTIP, 2030) in December, 2012. The then Prime Minister of Pakistan, during a high level meeting in Karachi on July 10, 2014, announced to provide infrasturcture component to launch the BRT Green Line project on modern lines to alleviate the serve traffic congestion problems in the city and to improve the quality of life of the daily commuters by improving the existing transport system.
Objectives
Karachi city is passing through an uncontrolled phase of rapid urbanization and motorization. The mitigation of transportation externalities requires a shift towards sustainable transportation system.
The city’s present public transport system constitutes a small percentage of total vehicle fleet (4.5%) and serves about 42% of passenger demand yet not dedicated lanes or any other feasible traffic management solution has been provided as compared to private vehicles, which are roughly 36% of the total vehicular traffic but carry only 21% of passengers. The Para-transit mode constitutes 10% of the vehicle fleet and carries 8% of passengers while contract carriages constitute 2% of the vehicle fleet but carry 10% of total passengers (JICA Person Trip Study, 2005).
The main project objectives are defined as under:
To provide reliable, safe, affordable, high quality and fast BRT Bus Service
To improve the quality of life of commuters in Karachi
To vastly improve the quality of public transport system in Karachi
To provide infrastructure that allows buses to ply in an efficient manner with exclusive right-of-way for a significant portion of their route length, and
Reduce travel time.
Proposed route for Green Line starts from Municipal Park, where a rotary U-turn lane is proposed for buses. The plane alignment extends along M.A Jinnah Road towards northest up to Gurumandir, and after Gurumandir the alignment runs northward along Business Recorder Road, Nawab Siddique Ali Khan Road, Shahrah-e-Shershah Suri and Shahrah-e-Usman passing by some of the major landmarks such as Numaish, Board Office and Nagan Chowrangi.
The Green Line BRT shares the common corridor with Blue line between Muncipal Park and Gurumandir.
Project Description
This project will constructed a busway (dedicated for BRT vehicles) in the median of the roads along the corridor with stations in the center of the median in both at grade and elevated sections which all provide high speed (25 Km/h) and high capacity (29,400 passengers per hour per direction) service. The design capacity of the proposed BRT system with passing lanes provision will increase based on the number of direct / express services run between stations in the future, as required.
