Stalled mass transit

The Sindh chief minister has said that Karachi needs at least 15,000 buses to meet its daily transport demand. As of 2023, the city reportedly had a little over a thousand buses and that number is unlikely to have increased by a factor of 15 in the last two years. The chief minister’s comments came as he unveiled plans for a comprehensive Karachi Transport Master Plan in partnership with the World Bank. The master plan will integrate Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems, metro light rail, and the revival of the Karachi Circular Railway to provide modern and sustainable mobility solutions. He also claimed that the 21-kilometre Yellow Line BRT project would carry 300,000 passengers daily once completed in December 2025. The chances that this will indeed happen by the end of the year are far from certain. Karachi’s BRT projects have been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The Green Line project, initiated in 2016, was scheduled to be completed in a year for around Rs16.85 billion. The cost had reached Rs35 billion by January 2022 and work on the second phase is still ongoing. According to a petition, the Red Line project has faced similar issues, with the completion date being dragged all the way to 2026 despite initially being slated to be done by 2023. The petition also claims that the cost has ballooned from Rs79 billion to Rs103 billion. It should also be mentioned that the drawn-out construction of metro lines often worsens traffic and becomes particularly problematic when it rains.

Mass transit is not just a Karachi problem. Across the urban centres of Pakistan, public transport is scarce and transport and road infrastructure is barely functional and unable to handle the large urban populations the country now has. Attempts to solve this problem, mainly through metro lines and bus projects, acquired a new urgency in the mid-to-late 2010s and while some have been more successful than others, none of them has been enough. The rural areas, often not even mentioned in conjunction with transport problems, are arguably the worst off. The country lacks the sort of national bus and train network that the low-income majority in these regions can rely on and, as a result, travel becomes a serious financial burden for rural residents. Meanwhile, the number of private vehciles in the country just keeps going up. Passenger car sales (PAMA members) in the country surged by 57 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in August 2025 compared to August 2024, according to data released last week and sales of motorcycles and rickshaws increased by 42 per cent YoY.

While leaders talk about sustainable transport and mass transit, the people are racing in the opposite direction. They cannot wait years for buses and metro lines which might not serve their needs even when they are eventually finished or for circular railways to be revived. They need to get to work and home from work tomorrow and the public transport network in both rural and urban areas simply does not allow them to do so in a timely manner. The rise of ride-sharing apps has only pushed the country further in this direction. While one can now get around without their own car or bike, they still depend on someone who has one. And the streets remain choked with traffic and pollution. Those in charge must find ways to accelerate the transition to mass transit and ensure that the building of these projects does not create new problems for people.