Budgetary constraint in next five years: PC calls for reviewing MTPs as no subsidies to be available

Planning Commission has recommended that the federal and provincial governments of Sindh, Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa should undertake the critical review of mass-transit projects (MTPs) as the projected subsidies would not be available due to budgetary constraint in the next five years.
The recommendations of the PC came in the form of comments compiled by its Transport & Communication Section while carrying out technical appraisal of Karachi Urban Mobility Project, which encompasses of mass-transit projects of metropolis.
According to official documents, it is apparent from media reports that all mass transit projects being executed are under construction or planning stages and have suffered from serious and major deficiencies and shortcomings in concepts and strategies adopted and employed in designing and executing projects. It is also pointed out that due to lower than projected revenue-generation, these projects are relying on government's subsidies.
Technical appraisal on Karachi BRT project showed that no effort was made to survey and evaluate the existing public ridership, culture, habits and practices as the introduction of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) requires these to change.
Also, no measures were taken to obtain from the onset services and experience of existing BRT operators while designing and executing these BRTs and establishing and creating practical feeder bus services to feed the BRTs resulting in lower than projected ridership, resulting lower than projected revenues which will lead to increased subsidies.
The study also showed that no effort was made to plan and build in non-fare revenue generation in terms of advertising and using the BRT corridor for mid and highrise urban multi use real estate development which would have resulted in increasing non-fare revenues of up to 30% of the fares and mitigated the need for subsidies.
Thus, the federal and provincial governments of Punjab, KP and Sindh will have to undertake a critical review as the projected subsidies will not be available due to budgetary constraints during the next five years.
The technical appraisal suggested that it be imperative that the federal government, World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) approach and engage with interested existing international BRT operators to provide advice and guidance for both existing BRTs and those to be constructed BRTs in an effort to optimize and rationalize what has already been executed and what will be executed in future.
The PC based its recommendations by identifying that the current BRTs are neither providing the optimum service to public and the ridership due to the non-availability of feeder bus services and nor are they optimizing the investment in generating non-fare revenues. The PC recommended that the execution of new BRTs has to be implemented by an effective execution agency in a manner that the planned BRTs remain on cost as budgeted and on time as planned as all have experienced delays due to poor planning and execution and increased costs.
It proposed that an experienced local financial entity should be engaged who would manage the funding of potential BRT to ensure transparency as well as an experienced international BRT operator, who would execute the construction of BRT and manage the bus operations and maintenance.