OK here is my take about the Lahore Metro:
Metro Bus – Waste of money
If you read my old posts when the Metro bus was being built, I said, definitely people will benefit from the project. It is the cheapest mean of transport for labour class so a big sigh of relief for daily commute. It’s definitely going to attract hundreds of thousands of people on regular basis and will also be cost effective solution for tourists visiting Lahore from both within Pakistan and foreigners. It is bound to become a success simply because no such project exists in heavily congested city of Lahore.
But the whole project is flawed and initiated for increasing vote bank in Lahore. The priorities were not right as the government wanted to cash publicity neglecting few technical faults with the idea of metro bus. I always believed Metro underground system is the ultimate solution for mega cities such as Karachi and Lahore. These metro buses might be good for smaller city but many cities around the world with a population of over 6 million are building underground subway system including our neighbouring nations of India and Bangladesh. India already has number of operational underground metro projects and I think Delhi Metro should be a template model for us.
I think the amount of 28-100 billion rupees spent on metro bus as claimed by various sources would have been saved and used for Metro train. Imagine the land used for Metro bus could have been used for adding one more additional lane on both directions, vastly improving the congestion on forever-busy Shahdara, Ferozpur Road and Old Lahore etc. The underground system is within the ground so it would not occupy any land on ground.
The only reason I understand for cancelling the original metro train project was that it was inaugurated during the previous government of Q-League under the regime of Parvez Musharraf. I remember it was cancelled citing lack of funds but when Shahbaz Sharif was disqualified by the court and Salman Taseer tookover for few weeks, he revived the same old project saying he failed to understand the reason for slowing the underground project when the money was also available in the previous budget. The project was shelved however after the government was restored and we are now talking about reviving the same project under the banner of N Publicity League.
Lahore Metro
Better late than never, may the time has come, may be Shahbaz Sharif has realised the importance of underground trains in the 21st century. The British built underground system in the 19th century to tackle the growing population of London and we are still trying to explore solutions for smooth flow of traffic in the 21st century.
Metro train is the only solution to move forward for heavily populated Pakistan. It is a very important project and we need such projects in at least Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, the economic hubs of Pakistan with minimum population of 7.5 million.
I am not sure about the true numbers but I assume if the daily ridership reaches even just over a million, thousands of vehicles will be taken off road and will also benefit the national exchequer indirectly by saving imported fuel costs and improved road infrastructure. It will also be beneficial for improving traffic inflow, reducing unemployment and may play a positive role in driving the national economy. Despite that, it may still incur losses as is the case for most of the metro train systems around the world but its both direct and indirect benefits are huge and there are some examples of companies making profit from the metro projects so if we play smart, this is going to be the game changer for the city.
.. If you own a car then This project is not for you...Public transit for common man who will travel the city of Lahore for only 20 rupees.... The real change .!!!
