ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Railways has repaired and renovated around 100 railway bridges during the last five years designed in such a way to meet modern standard and ensure safety of passengers across the country.
“Pakistan Railways is inspecting the bridges on daily basis and making efforts to rehabilitate the remaining poor condition bridges as soon as possible,” official in the Ministry of Railways told APP.
The Railways administration desired to provide quick and safe journey to public within shortest possible time, the official added.
“There are 13,841 bridges including 532 major and 13,309 minor bridges over the system. Most of the bridges were constructed well before partition, when Railway System was introduced in the subcontinent and have completed their life,” he said.
To a question, he said that owing to dedicated inspections and regular maintenance, bridges were generally in satisfactory condition for safe train operation.
He said the rehabilitation of bridges would ensure safety standards, remove speed restrictions imposed on weak bridges, ensure effective maintenance in reducing the operational cost and meet the increased requirements of freight and passengers.
To another question, he said that Pakistan Railways has rehabilitated 789.34 kilometer track by removing temporary speed restrictions and increasing speeds for ensuring sustainable train operation.
“The rehabilitation work was carried out at 14 different routes in four provinces, under various Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) projects,” he added.
Giving province wise detail of the rehabilitated track, he said 397.05 km track rehabilitated in Punjab, 215.60 km in Sindh, 23.69 km in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and 153.00 km in Balochistan in last five years.
“The routes included Karachi-Hyderabad, Katrina-Dadu, Dera Murad Jamali-Sibi, Khanpur-Multan, Lodhran-Pakpattan, Faisalabad-Sheikhupura, Multan-Lahore, Lahore-Lalamusa, Peshawar Attock City, Islamabad-Rawalpindi, Multan-Kot Addu, Kot Addu-Mianwali, Sibi-Khost and Hyderabad-Rohri- Khanpur,” he added.