BRT in Pakistan – Comparison

Mass transit systems are a necessity of big cities. All major, or most of smaller cities, have mass transit systems. Mass Transit System can be in the form of underground trains, on ground trains, Overhead rails, Light rails or Rapid Bus services. Underground train system is most while Rapid buss transit system is least expansive option. Similarly underground train project takes the most while Rapid Bus Transits systems take least time from scratch to start.

• The London Underground first opened as an “underground railway” in 1863
• Its first electrified underground line opened in 1890
• Beijing Subway is the world’s busiest and longest metro system
• New York City Subway has the largest number of stations

Though bigger cities in developed countries have mass transit system for several decades, its only during last decade or so that Pakistan started planning and building the same. Considering the economic challenges preference is on the least expansive i.e. Bus Rapid Transit Systems (BRTs)

Few interesting fcats about various BRTs in pakistan:

• 6 Pakistani cities have BRTs in operation or in construction
• First BRT started its operation in Lahore
• At a cost of US$ 20/km BRT for twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad is among the most expansive in the works
• Collective population of 4 cities that have operational BRTs is less than the estimated total population of Karachi
• The largest city in Pakistan Karachi has its BRT under construction now for over 6 years
• Once, if it did, completed Karachi’s BRT will be the largest

Following is a comparison of various BRTs in Pakistan. The blogger could not find one comprehensive source of information on various BRT projects. Data is collected from various news stories in bits and pieces and have been organized for your review. That why you would see lots of columns empty which means that specific information about that a particular project was not available to the blogger.

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Babar Saeed

bsaeed@yahoo.com

August 25, 2020