Analyzing Public Transport System in Twin Cities of Rawalpindi/Islamabad

Abstract

AbstractCities are growing at alarming pace making huge burden on city planners and governments. Uncontrolled growth of cities is making urban land use unsustainable economically and environmentally. In transportation section, unprecedented growth of motorized traffic causes traffic congestion, time delays and pollution. Shift toward sustainable transportation system, i.e., improvement of public transport, development of Mass Transit Routes, cycle and walk trips-oriented road network is the need of the hour. Mostly public transport system constitutes a small portion of motorized traffic on city road network. In many developed and under developed cities, development of Mass Transit System is initiated to shift vehicular traffic to public transport. Mass Transit System only works when it is developed and operated as a whole and not as a part. Operations of one or two lines do not give benefits of modal shift, congestion relief and journey time saving in a city of more than 5 Million populations. Construction of complete Mass Transit System (MTS) including operations, integration of existing public transport routes and development of feeder routes is a gigantic task and in most of the cities could not be developed in single go. In this paper, MTS development in large cities from scratch is studied with following purpose and methodology. Purpose of the study is to analyze development, construction and operations of Mass Transit System (MTS) in old and large cities without MTS and to check whether this development is feasible and sustainable. Basic design of the study is to investigate different steps and phases involved in development of MTS in Twin Cities of Rawalpindi/Islamabad. For reference and comparison, development of MTS in cities of Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi is presented also. Major findings are that the development of Mass Transit System (MTS) in old and large cities which grew without MTS is a gigantic job requiring continuous Government will, allocation of funds and political stability. These things generally lack in most of under developed countries which in the long run jeopardizes the development of MTS projects in development phase. Instead the author recommends the idea of constructing new cities along peripheral of old cities which is more feasible and sustainable. KeywordsMass TransitRidershipCongestion reliefPublic transportTransit orientedMobilitySustainable developmentNew citiesSocial costEconomic costFinancial cost