In a meeting that happened in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to launch a high-speed rail project that could cost $9.85 billion.
Pakistan and China agreed to start the Mainline-1 (ML-1) railway from Karachi to Peshawar and the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) project. The KCR project of Pakistan Railway will be started under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) rather than the Public Private Partnership mode.
Talking to the media men, Federal Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal stated that both sides had achieved consensus during the 11th meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) on CPEC held virtually, on main things including the signing of agreements on ML-1 and KCR through institutional formalities.
Recently, the Central Development Working Party (CDWP) cleared the Karachi Circular Railway Project (KCR) costing Rs. 292.389 billion.
Sources reported that this mega project includes the construction of 44 kilometers long and track starting from Drigh Road and passing through different areas including Federal B Area, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Liaquatabad, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Sindh Industrial Trading Estate (SITE), and Lyari.
The scope of work comprises the construction of vertical and horizontal curvature, roadway/railway cross-section elements, ramp gradients, and layout of structures concerning the alignment.
Moreover, the KCR development as a modern urban railway will add to the current public transport facilities in Karachi which were insufficient to meet the incremental demand over the last few decades because of the non-availability of modern mass transit facilities and decreasing supply of large buses whereas the city continues to expand in population and urban area.
The project is intended to provide reliable, safe, and environmentally friendly public transport to the citizens of Karachi.
The project, according to the sources, is expected to serve 457,000 passengers per day, with a future capacity of one million. The project will use electric trains and will be operational seven days a week, 17 hours per day.
Thirty stations would be built along the corridor, which would cover the city’s most densely populated areas, and a dual-track urban rail mass transit system would be built in four years.