KCR fate


WHETHER the weather is good or bad, every city needs a comfortable mass transit system. In bad weather, like heat and cold waves or uninterrupted rains, like the ones we recently had, the need for transport is felt more acutely. From that point of view Karachi is a most unfortunate city.

All governments, and I mean all, have failed to give the country’s largest city a mass and rapid transport system its people need. The abandonment of the Karachi Circular Railway was a tragedy. Built during the Ayub regime, the KCR had a limited utility, but it could have been expanded to turn into a mode of mass transit system of a city that was expanding.
Since its abandonment, countless schemes have been made and feasibilities studies involving foreign parties prepared. In one case, even a foundation stone was laid, but the plan remains still-born.
The plans included two or three elevated pathways on which trains would run from Shershah to Karachi Cantonment station and along Bunder Road, etc. But the scheme was never implemented. About the KCR there have been made plans for its revival, nd the Japanese spent perhaps a decade to examine it from every point of view. They pledged both financial and technical help. All they demanded was that encroachments on KCR land be removed. That was never done, and it could not be done given the scale of encroachments by individuals and parties.
Since April last year there has been a drive against encroachments, not just on the KCR land but elsewhere. Countless people have been rendered homeless, but there is no evidence that this will lead to a revival of the KCR. In fact, federal railway minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad once said the KCR plan had not been finalised. This being the position one wanders how long this city will live without a modern transport system while the population continues to increase.
Regrettably, while we continue to play without our plans and schemes, many third world cities have developed enviable transport systems. Cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Delhi, Tehran and Cairo have managed to have fast and comfortable systems, but we are still ‘planning’. The truth is that no provincial government had the will to concentrate on a mass transit scheme for Karachi and make it a going concern. The KCR, it seems, will remain a project.
Rafiq Dawood
Karachi
Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2020

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