Daily Times

Pakistan Railways said that it was planning to make a fresh request to China for undertaking the $US 6.8b Mainline-I (ML-I) project under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The ML-I project involves track doubling and upgrades some 1872 kilometres of railway split into three sections, the 527 km northern section between Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Lahore, 521km of track between Lahore and Hyderabad and 740 km of track upgrades along Rawalpindi – Peshawar and Hyderabad – Multan lines, sources in the Ministry of Railways told APP on Friday.

They said the work would also include improvements to signalling and control systems. The project was part of the CPEC, a subsection of the Belt and Road Initiative. The ML-I was the most significant one to revamp the major railway tracks in the country with a view to reviving the sagging railways infrastructure and putting it back on track to achieve its past glory, they added. Under the project, they said that the trains with speeds of around 120 to 160 kilometre per hour would run on the track. Currently, the trains can move at speeds from 65km to 105km per hour, they said.

The project, which was approved by the Executive Committee of National Economic Council on August 2020, would be executed by financing through the Chinese Government Concessional Loan.

According to the experts that the ML-I was a ‘game changer’, and once completed, Peshawar and Karachi would become the centres of business activity and a source of livelihood for tens of thousands of people, the sources said and added that the project, which would see level crossings converted into underpasses and flyovers, would also benefit the landlocked Central Asian countries through land route linkages.

They said that Pakistan Railways was expecting to transport over 20pc of the country’s freight business after the completion of Main Line-I which would help the department to make profitable entity.

Currently, Pakistan Railways is transporting only 4pc of freight traffic in the country which was not sufficient for the department, they added.