Socio-cultural and Economic Impacts of BRT Peshawar

Abstract

Huge transportation projects can affect inhabitants i.e. People living nearby the construction or have businesses along the route. During the previous decade the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has been working to develop an institutional framework for urban renewal especially focusing the city of Peshawarbecause Peshawar is the biggest city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwaand had a major problem of transport and eventually the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa came up with a solution in the form of BRT (Bus rapid transit system) and started working on it immediately at 20thOctober, 2017. While starting work on the project the Socio-cultural and economic impacts were ignored while preparing the feasibility report for BRT Peshawar. Also, the impacts during the construction time were not taken into consideration. In this study we wanted to identify the socio-cultural and economic impacts of BRT Peshawar both During the construction time and after BRT got operational.Impact identification was the most important task to initiate the study. So, after studying relevant literature the impacts were identified and structured questionnaire was prepared for further research. This questionnaire was tested by conducting a Pilot Survey and reliability analysis of the responses using SPSS which helped us in finalizing the questionnaire. Stratified sampling technique was used for distribution of questionnaires and a sample size of 385 was taken. The questionnaires were distributed according to the length of the corridor sections and we got our results from this survey. After this when the project started, we conducted another survey and got our results. It was found that the commute time was increased because of congestions caused by the huge construction of BRT. While on the other hand those who had relatives on the opposite side of the fence, their meeting frequency decreased. Also, it was found that Pedestrian Roadcrossing and Vehicular U-turns became difficult. The Privacy of the inhabitants was not disturbed due to the flyovers and the health was impacted badly. Overall BRT projects always have more positive impacts than negative impacts while during construction the impacts can be minimized if we identify them before starting the project.