KARACHI: In order to integrate services and ensuring compatible physical design of the corridors, a two-day ‘Technical Karachi Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) Integration Workshop’ was organised with the collaboration of key stakeholders of Sindh government and others experts.
Asian Development Bank’s Senior Transport Specialist and BRT expert, Lloyd Wright, after conclusion of two-day workshop while talking to Daily Times said that presently, Karachi is suffering from worst traffic issues and the need of hour is the speedy work on Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) standard to meet the objectives.
He said according to WHO study, 15 percent population of Asia has physical restrictions that limit the ability to use public transport. The participants of Technical Committee on Integration and Intelligent System (IITS) and others shared their views on Green Line, Red Line, Yellow Line and Blue Line for its compatibility of infrastructure between each planned BRT lines.
Lloyd Wright said that the objectives of this workshop was to discuss weather protected and modern stations of Green Line, Red Line, Yellow Line and Blue Line designed with implications for integrated services and BRT Standard scoring exercise with preparation and recommendations.
The workshop discussed frequent BRT services by subsidy-free operations, free Wi-Fi, affordable capital investment levels, no loss of employment in sector, maximise rider-ship levels, maximise service quality and travel times. Another expert, David Morgensztern also discussed a proposal for Chinese and European BRT study tours.
Lloyd Wright said that the secure and weather protected stations should permit customers to change routes, directions, and services within the secure and protective environment. The BRT services by clean diesel, bio-diesel, CNG, Bio-methane, LPG, Hybrid-electric, fuel cells are recommended in this regard, he said.
He said that a dedicated right-of-way is vital to ensure that buses can move quickly and unimpeded by congestion, dedicated lanes matter the most in heavily congested areas where it is harder to take a lane away from mixed traffic to dedicate it as a bus way.
The route is best located where conflicts with other traffic can be minimised, especially from turning movements from mixed-traffic lanes, he said.