ORIGIN & PURPOSE OF THE REPORT

When I was assigned this report by Mrs. Nighat Rizvi in October 97, there were a large number of topics we could choose from. My choice of KMTP was due to my abiding interest in the "Karachi Heritage Foundation" and the inevitable threat that this project poses to the rich and glorious architectural heritage of Karachi. Let me assure you that in the process of writing this report, I have been totally unbiased to the subject I was writing about and have finally come to the conclusion that the "Heritage Foundation" is correct in its assumption that the project will do more harm than good.

Apart from the academic guidelines that need to be followed, the purpose of the report was to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages that this project provides to one of the largest metropolitan areas of the world.

SCOPE

After examining and evaluating the information provided by the various newspaper articles and books on the subject, it had to be decided as to what were the pros and cons of the entire project. In this manner, the evaluation was narrowed down to the following fields in order to come up to a suitable conclusion: importance was given to the financial implications, environmental impact, historical and logical ethics as well as the routing of the tracks.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Karachi was a small city of a 100,000 people when the British provided a 10-mile diesel tram system besides the double track railway mainline connecting Karachi Port with up-country. They also acquired land for two additional rail tracks up to Pipri where space for a large marshalling yard was also reserved. This shows that the British planners has very correctly planned that Karachi deserved a mass transit system 100 years earlier, but unfortunately we are still undecided today.

The diesel-operated trams did serve the low and even middle-income people of Karachi. Instead of upgrading these recommended by the 1952 Karachi Master Plan and the 1974 Karachi Master Plan; these are unceremoniously uprooted, resulting in the present chaotic conditions and consequent astronomical economic losses besides huge expenses on law and order problem.

The frequency of accidents continued to rise when in 1985, as a result of the well-known Bushra Zaidi tragedy followed by the Quaidabad accident killing 30 people, the city was paralyzed for several months causing huge socio-economic losses. This ultimately turned into a major law and order problem in Karachi in which millions of rupees must have been spent so far.

These economic losses were reported to be of the order of Rs 1.5 billion for each day of inactivity perhaps on the basis of the city's contribution to GDP. Thus the total losses to the nation can well be imagined as these could be many times the cost of providing a modern Mass Transit System apart from the recurring losses of KTC and the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR), which took away huge subsidies during the last two decades. The KTC has since been wound up and the KCR is running two empty trains a day incurring further losses.

Needless to say, the government after realizing the importance of a Mass Transit System had finally decided upon one in-order to free the city of the congestion and the pollution. Nonetheless, the manner in which this plan is being implemented is proof enough of the fact that it was not planned by the technocrats but simply the bureaucrats who do not have much to offer when it comes to practicality and logic.