Agreement signed for construction of Red Line

Karachi’s dream to have the first transport system of Pakistan using biomethane produced from animal waste as the fuel resource inched nearer on Monday as an agreement-signing ceremony was held between Trans Karachi officials and a construction firm for the Red Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project.

The affairs of the Red Line BRT are being looked after by a registered company, Trans Karachi, which will execute the project, while the Sindh Mass Transit Authority (SMTA) will only act as a regulator. This was one of the conditions of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the chief financer of the project.

Funds for the Red Line BRT will be provided by the ADB along with the Sindh government, UN Green Climate Fund (GCF), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Agence Française de Développement (AFD). The GCF has issued a grant of $11 million for the project.

The Red Line BRT project, which has been renamed as the Karachi Breeze Red Line Project, is approximately a 29-kilometre corridor, extending from Model Colony in Malir in the northeast of the port city to the Mazar-e-Quaid and Jinnah Avenue in its southwest, where it will intersect at Numaish with the Green Line corridor that is currently under construction.

The route of the Red Line project will pass through 13 major intersections and a total of 24 bus stops will be located along it where entry and exit points will be provided. Ten overhead bridges and seven underpasses have also been included in the BRT’s plan.

Separate consultants have been hired for the three tasks of the operational design, detail design, and institutional development and capacity building of the project. The operational design is being drafted by the Exponent Engineering Pvt Ltd, while the detail design is being devised by the Mott MacDonald Pakistan (MMP).

The institutional development and capacity building has been undertaken by the National Engineering Services Pakistan (Nespak) and the Integrated Transport Planning Limited. The Red Line project is to be implemented by the Sindh government and its cost has been estimated at Rs78.384 billion. As many as 300,000 people are expected to use the corridor daily once it is completed.

The construction work for the project is expected to begin in 90 days. Sindh Transport Minister Awais Qadir Shah was the chief guest at the signing ceremony. According to Shah, the Red Line BRT will be one of its kind mass transit project in the country. The project will have as many as 213 buses, he explained. The share of the provincial government in the project is Rs75 million.