KARACHI: The slow pace of work on BRT Green Line has irked citizens as the digging work on main arteries has resulted in congestion of traffic.
Traffic is moving very slowly at Quaid’s mausoleum area as the main MA Jinnah Road is being dug up for a 1.75-kilometer underpass from Gurumandir to Bundu Khan Hotel. Similarly, some areas of Nazimabad and Gulbahar are still affected due to ongoing work on the Green Line.
However, official sources said that the delay is due to change in project design as the Sindh government and Quaid-e-Azam Mausoleum Management Board (QMMB) were not happy with the previous design of this crucial project.
This BRT is the project of the ministry of communications and government of Pakistan and is being executed by Karachi Infrastructure Development Company Limited (KIDCL).
The KIDCL says that this project is 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 prime minister, during a high-level meeting in Karachi on July 10, 2014, announced to provide infrastructure component to launch the BRT Green Line project on modern lines to alleviate the severe traffic congestion in the city. It also aimed to improve the quality of life of the daily commuters by improving the existing transport system.
As per the website of the KIDCL, the proposed route for Green Line starts from Municipal Park where a rotary U-turn lane is proposed for buses. The plane alignment extends along MA Jinnah Road towards Northeast up to Gurumandir. 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 Nagin Chowrangi.
The BRT Green Line shares the common corridor with Blue Line between Municipal Park and Gurumandir.
This project will construct a bus-way (dedicated to BRT vehicles) in the median of the roads, along the corridor with stations in the centre of the median in both at-grade and elevated sections. 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.
