The Central Development Working Party (CDWP) on Tuesday cleared the Karachi Circular Railway Project (KCR) worth Rs. 292.389 billion.
A special meeting of the CDWP was held under the chairmanship of Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal.
The project envisages the construction of 44 kilometers long and dedicated track starting from Drigh Road and passing through different areas including Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Federal B Area, Liaquatabad, North Nazimabad, Nazimabad, Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE), and Lyari.
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The scope of work includes the construction of horizontal and vertical curvature, roadway/railway cross-section elements, ramp gradients, and layout of structures with respect to the alignment.
The scope of work also includes construction stations, provision of drivers, informatory, regulatory, and warning signs, passenger facilitation signs along with allied facilities, and route alignment of the KCR. The project is a part of an overall scheme for the improvement of transport infrastructure including road network, provision of public transport/mass transit facilities, and traffic management in Karachi.
The development of KCR as a modern urban railway will add to the existing public transport facilities in Karachi which have fallen short to meet the incremental demand over the last few decades due to the non-availability of modern mass transit facilities and declining supply of large buses while the city continues to expand in population and urban area.
The main objective of the project is to provide reliable, safe, and environmentally friendly public transport to the metropolitan city of Karachi. The project entails the construction of a dual-track urban rail mass transit system expected to be constructed in four years.
The project is expected to serve 457,000 passengers every day which is expected to rise to 1 million per day in the future. The project will deploy the use of electric trains and will be operational for seven days a week and 17 hours a day. Thirty stations would be constructed under the project along the corridor covering the densely populated areas of the city.
Federal Minister Ahsan Iqbal directed the concerned officials to immediately settle the issues in PC-1 and submit the report in two days.
The meeting was attended by the Secretary Ministry of Planning Commission, the Chief Economist, officials from the Ministry of Railway, and representatives from the Sindh government.
