The revival of the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) is one of the few public welfare projects which has remained victim either of lop-sided priorities of the successive governments or their proverbial apathy to the problems of common man.
Same is the case with Karachi's Mass Transit project. During the past four decades a number of plans were announced, feasibility studies prepared and finances worth millions of rupees allocated and spent on this project but nothing concrete has ever come out of it.
With Karachi's transport system gradually turning into an eternal mess, time and again there is talk about the issue being taken care of and remedial measure being taken to address it.
Karachi and its residents have a long history of being served with "only make believe" plans and projects, especially in the transport sector, and then left to curse their fate. In the past many years a number of schemes had been drawn and approved to address the transport problems in the city. But the schemes were either shelved or abandoned for one reason or another.
Take the examples of recent years. Former City Nazim Niamatullah Khan had introduced the Urban Transport System (UTS) under which around 500 CNG buses were to be imported. Some of these buses had in fact arrived and it was comforting to see them plying on city roads. But later these buses disappeared and the scheme was apparently shelved.
The present Nazim, Syed Mustafa Kamal thinks that the solution to city's transport problem lies in building expressways, underpasses and flyovers. And one can see the changing landscape of the city with emerging flyovers and signal-free corridors. For the last two years we had also been hearing from him (Mustafa Kamal) that some 8000 new CNG buses would soon replace old buses on the city's roads.
But all this rhetoric has never been translated into action and ends up merely as a public relations exercise and propaganda gimmick. Unless it was meant to be yet another exercise with similar intents and purposes, President Asif Ali Zardari recently provided an opportunity to be once again optimistic about the government waking up to the suffering of the people and coming out with an action plan to address the transport issue in Karachi.
During his last visit to the city, the President chaired a special meeting and after listening to a presentation approved a number of projects worth billions of rupees aimed at clearing the transport mess in Karachi.
These included i) CNG Bus Project for Karachi, named after Benazir Bhutto, in which only women will have a right to ownership. Under the scheme the number of buses in city will increase to 4000 by 2012; ii) the revival of Karachi Circular Railway at a cost of 1.6 billion dollars with international assistance; and iii) Rapid Bus Transport System for which three more signal-free corridors will be developed in the city.
However, the most important outcome of the meeting was yet another commitment from the government to revive the KCR. But the common man has reasons to be cynical about the government pledges and its sincerity about the projects of public interest.
The fate of KCR had been hanging in the balance all these years not because of the lack of financial or technical resources but for want of political and administrative will on the part of the decision-makers at different levels of successive governments. Add to it the conflicting interests of so many stakeholders which include federal, provincial and city governments; Pakistan Railways; the transport, builders and land-grabbers mafias; political parties; etc.
The chequered history of the Karachi Circular Railway is therefore an agonising tale of poor governance on the part of the ruling cliques, be they politicians, elected representatives, military rulers or bureaucrats.
The circular railway system was conceived for Karachi in the late 1950s. The work on the project started in 1964 and it became operational in 1969 under the exclusive ownership of Pakistan Railways. It touched its peak in 1980s when dozens of up and down trains carried thousands of passengers. In the 1990s, the system started dwindling for unexplained reasons.
The so-called transport mafia is commonly accused of prevailing upon the government and its officials to gradually reduce allocations meant for the KCR. It is alleged that the builders groups also had a role in it as they were suspected of eyeing the 260 feet wide land corridor all along the 50 kilometers of the KCR track. Whatever the real causes, commuters in Karachi were deprived of a comfortable, speedy and cheaper means of travel when Pakistan Railways in December 1999 decided to terminate the KCR system.
(There is a common perception that another transport system of trams, operating in old city areas since pre-partition days was closed and terminated in 1970 under manipulation from the owners and operators of the private transport system).
In 2002, the Government of Sindh had hired a private firm, Engineering Consultants International (ECIL), to prepare a study for the revival and extension of the KCR project. The consultants proposed a three-phased plan. Phase-1 provided for the rehabilitation of the KCR on the existing track, as well as laying down a new track between Karachi Cantt station and Landhi junction so that the KCR could have its own track independent of the Pakistan Railways.
Phase-2 envisaged building of three loops in former districts Central and West, to cover the localities away from the existing track. Phase-3 provided for another loop to run through Keamari and extension of the Korangi line to cover Defence Society areas. Only God knows how much money was spent on this exercise and what happened to it.
Earlier, the Government of Sindh had issued an ordinance providing for the creation/establishment of a Karachi Metropolitan Transport Authority (KMTA) to be a responsible agency for the city's transport systems, including the Mass Transit and the KCR. However, this ordinance was allowed to die its own death.
In March 2005, as part of another gimmick, the then prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, inaugurated what the government claimed was the partial revival of Karachi Circular Railway. In fact it was an old 'local train' service between Karachi City and the Landhi railway stations that was re-inaugurated.
As this on-again and off-again KCR saga continued with preparation of reports and studies, allocations of finances, award and cancellation of contracts, and bids to resolve disputes over the control and management of the city's transport system, Pakistan sought Japan government's financial and technical assistance to help modernise and revive the rail transportation system for Karachi.
According to the understanding reached, the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), an official organ of the government of Japan, will sponsor the KCR revival project and provide financial assistance of 872.316 million dollars towards its cost. (This cost is based on the prices of 2006). The Japanese government, say the reports, had "agreed to provide a soft loan to cover the foreign funding" component which roughly comes to 654 million dollars. The Japan Bank of International Co-operation (JBIC) had also "agreed to provide the loan equivalent to the project's cost" but the approval from Islamabad to meet the local cost of 218 million dollars was still pending apparently for want of certain commitments from the provincial and city governments.
In the meantime, a company - the Karachi Urban Transport Corporation was registered in May 2008, with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan "to carry out the business of establishing and operating a mass transit railway system in Karachi which included the revival of KCR". Its shareholders include Pakistan Railways (60 percent), Sindh government (25 percent) and the Karachi City government (15 percent). The Chief Secretary of Sindh will be the Chairman of the Board of KUTC.
If newspaper reports are to be believed, considerable progress has been made on the project and a number of teams of Japanese experts have visited the city, carried out various surveys and have completed different studies and reports. The information available on the city government's website says that the JETRO feasibility study report on the revival of KCR, which was completed in 2006, has already been revalidated by a British consultant M/s. Scott Wilson Railways. Another study on the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has also been completed by the KUTC under the guidance of Japanese experts. The Sindh Environment Protection Agency held a public hearing on this study on April 18 last.
Official sources say that a survey relating to Resettlement Action Plan (RAP) is also in the final stages. It is the most crucial part of the project as it will involve the removal of encroachments from Railways land along the KCR track and the resettlement of about 50,000 affected people.
According to the Japanese study the total length of the track is approximately 50 kilometers, including 30 kilometers of circular section, 14 kilometers main railway track and six kilometers of the proposed extension connecting the Airport with the Drigh Road station. The dualisation of the entire 50 kilometer long track is also part of Japanese plan. A major bottle-neck for the smooth operation of KCR is the presence of 26 level crossings where the track crosses major city roads.
To overcome this problem the Japanese plan provides for 19 underpasses and three overhead bridges. The proposed a six-kilometer-long new underground track between Karachi Airport and Drigh Road station will, however, involve minimum dislocation.
The Central Development Working Party (CDWP) in principle approved the KCR revival project in September 2008. According to newspaper reports the project cost approved by the CDWP was Rs 52.372 billion, including foreign funding of about Rs 39.257 billion. The Planning Commission too has approved the PC-1 of the KCR project, as having the revalidated cost of 72 million dollars.
All this, apparently, paves the way for the formal signing of loan agreements with the Japan government in the coming months. According to the time-frame prepared by Japanese experts, the ground work on the project should have started in June 2009 and the project is stipulated to be completed by the end of the year 2011.
But this is not the end of story. Sources privy to official circles claim that already a row has started between the provincial and city governments and Pakistan Railways over the possession of the KUTC, the executing agency for the KCR revival project, especially the slot of the chairman of its board. It is also not clear as to whether the approvals extended by CDWP and the Planning Commission relate to the same project being undertaken by the Japanese or they pertain to some other parallel scheme.
What adds to this confusion is the latest announcement and approval of the KCR revival project by President Asif Ali Zardari. Is it a belated go-ahead signal for the Japanese plan or does it refer to some other scheme to be undertaken by some other group/agency? Or yet another political gimmick and propaganda exercise? The poor and hapless citizens of this God-forsaken metropolis can hardly do anything except to pray that this time, at last, the KCR revival scheme doesn't meet the fate of the plans of the past.