In the 21st century, the world is getting facilitating from modern easy and rapid transport system and the people of the world’s 5th largest city are still suffering from traffic issues.
Karachi is the finical hub of our country but people of Karachi city are compelled to travel in unsafe and overloaded buses. Due to the shortage of buses, people are compelled to travel in overload buses and resulting is overturning incidents.
Osama Soomro, a 3rd-year student of BS Media Studies is compelled to travel in an overloaded bus, he reaches late daily in class due to the shortage of the buses on the route.
“I have to hang out outside the bus every day to reach university and it is very irritating and painful and sometimes passengers fight to each other due accommodates more passengers than its capacity”, said Soomro.
“I have to stand to travel more than 12-kilometer distance and it is very difficult for me to travel with my heavy study bag”, he added.
Most of the people change two or three buses daily because many buses have not provided routes.
Most of the buses have no safety standards and proper seats. Even due to the unavailability of separate buses many female commuters have harassed daily from other passengers, conductors, and drivers.
A 19 years old student of BS Media Studies Bakhtawar Basaria is a sinus patient and it is difficult and painful for her to travel in overloaded buses.
“Public transport does not care women; smoking cigarettes and conductors push women to each other repeatedly. The incident of harassment of women in buses is also increasing government has needs to do something”, Basaria told.
“Conductors fill ladies section with gents, there should be a long section for ladies and small for gents because female commuters travel more than male” she added.
According to official data, the population of Karachi is more than 19,000,000 and according to the research, approximately 4.5% of public transport from all transport and it fulfills the need of 40% commuters of Karachi.
Most people use private transport and it is 36% of Karachi’s traffic and 21% commuters fulfill their needs from this private transport.
In Karachi, the total number of rickshaw and taxi is 10% of total traffic and these provide traveling facilities only 8% commuters.
Less than 4,000 buses provide transport facilities to 56,000 commuters and it is 42% of daily commuters, it means a bus carries 257 passengers daily.
Recently Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered to authorities to remove encroachment from the route of Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) and restore KCR.
Almost two decades ago the KCR was an effective source of transport for people of Karachi, daily hundreds of commuters were traveled through KCR.
Now negligence of authority railway land has been illegally encroached by peoples.
According to the research, there are needs of 10,000 big buses for peoples of Karachi and even according to official data, an average of 1100 new vehicles are being brought to the city’s roads daily and the pressure on roads constantly increasing.
