Clogged Karachi awaits promised rail system

Clogged Karachi awaits promised rail system

By Ovais Subhani

KARACHI (Reuter): Like many of Asia's fast-growing cities,
Pakistan's financial and commercial capital Karachi is choking on
traffic, and mass transit is still only a promise.

A century ago, British rulers laid a 16-km (10-mile) diesel
tramway in the business district of Karachi, recognizing the port
city's growing needs.

The tracks were torn up in 1975 to make way for a mass transit
system for this city on the Arabian Sea, whose population by then
had swollen to 4.5 million.

Now, some 12 million people live in Karachi, and commuters
once again are being promised relief from the traffic-choked
streets.

In January 1996, the prime ministers of Pakistan and Canada
signed a deal to build 13.7 km (8-1/2 miles) of partly elevated
light rail tracks at a cost now estimated at $666 million.

Canada's Jean Chretien signed the accord on behalf of the
Indus Mass Transit Company (IMTC), a consortium comprising SNC-
Lavalin of Canada, Sezai Turkes Feyzi Akkaya Construction Co. of
Turkey and Adcon Engineering of Pakistan.

The 13.7-km track is only part of the first priority corridor
recommended by a 1986 city master plan that envisioned six such
corridors with a total length of 87.4 km (55 miles).

Work on the much-delayed light rail system, designed to
relieve congestion and pollution emitted by about a million
vehicles, is due to start by March 1998, officials said.

"We are confident that with final approval of a revised
financial plan, the sponsors will achieve financial close before
December and actual construction will start by March 1998," Tahir
Somroo, Sindh province's transport secretary, told Reuters.

An IMTC spokesman said the first 13.7 km of track would start
carrying passengers early in 2000, assuming the consortium meets
its deadline for financial closure in December this year.

An earlier deadline of June 1997 was missed after the cash-
strapped government failed to arrange funds and loan guarantees
totaling $235 million which it had agreed to provide.

Somroo said the government was now seeking bridge financing
for part of its commitments as the federal budget for fiscal
1997/98 allotted no funds to the Karachi mass transit project.

Provincial officials say the lukewarm attitude of successive
federal governments had made the project politically sensitive.
Karachi residents have long felt aggrieved at what they see as
deliberate neglect of their city's creaking infrastructure and
civic amenities, citing it as one reason for the political
violence that has flourished in recent years.

Soon after independence in 1947, Karachi became the focus for
commercial and industrial growth, turning into a metropolis with
traffic problems as severe as any other world city.

Government studies in 1952 and 1974 recommended upgrading the
British-laid tram tracks. Instead, they were uprooted.

Road accidents, traffic jams and congestion continued to
plague the city as small buses, vans and three-wheeler rickshaws
belched out fumes and preyed on the nerves of city-dwellers.

Violence erupted in Karachi in April 1985 after a passenger
van ran over a college girl. The unrest swiftly took an ethnic
turn since ethnic Pashtuns dominated the public transport system
while most commuters were Mohajirs -- Urdu-speaking Moslems who
had migrated to Pakistan from India after partition in 1947.

Ethnic tensions may have deeper roots, but the transport
system provided a flashpoint for violence, which has since become
almost endemic and cost several thousand lives.

A judicial commission, set up after the 1985 clashes, in which
hundreds of people were killed, identified the absence of a mass
transit system as a major cause of the unrest.

In 1986, the government launched a Karachi mass transit study
with World Bank support. It was conducted by a consortium of
consultants, including Maunsells of Britain, Parsons Brinckerhoff
of the United States and Ilyas Sons of Pakistan.

The study recommended building 87.4 km of partly elevated
exclusive bus ways which could later be converted to light rail
tracks. It identified six priority corridors for development.
But because of a lack of funds, the detailed engineering, design,
environmental impact assessment and resettlement plans were
completed for only two of the six corridors.

Tenders in 1990 and 1995 seeking contractors who would
construct the system on a build-operate-transfer basis, resulted
in the selection of IMTC to build Corridor-1 for $586 million and
Interinfra French Co. to build Corridor-2 for $1.1 billion.
After much debate and political wrangling, then prime minister
Benazir Bhutto gave the go-ahead for Corridor-1.

Somroo said the Sindh provincial government had recently
agreed to take a $13 million equity stake in the project to cut
the federal government's equity commitment to $47 million.

He refused to disclose specific proposals made to the
sponsors, saying they might be made public after approval by
their parent companies and major lenders. He said further delay
would lead to cost overruns and more expensive loan repayments.

A Sindh government minister, who asked not to be identified,
said the project seemed expensive to the federal government but
had the full support of Karachi-based political parties.

"If this opportunity is lost, it may never come around again,"
he said. "We have already taken several international firms
through an intense and much dragged-out exercise.

"Pakistan stands a good chance of losing international
credibility if this deal doesn't go through," he added.