Karachis Public Transport: Origins, Evolution, and Future Planning

Transport is a key driver of socioeconomic development, as it allows people to access jobs, markets, social interaction, education, and other services. Thus, enabling people to rise out of poverty and overcome social exclusion. Transport facilitates economic development by adding value to goods brought to markets and linking rural areas to cities and global supply chains.

Karachi-the largest city in Pakistan and the twelfth-largest city in the world and Pakistan’s premier industrial and financial centre-has a major transport crisis. At independence in 1947 it had a fairly efficient public transport system. Since then, the State has made enormous investments to address its transport needs. Different models of public, private, and public-private partnerships were developed and implemented along with a railway system. Many of these initiatives met with considerable success to begin with, but ultimately fizzled out.

This book describes the pre-independence situation and subsequent initiatives while analysing the political, social, technical, and financial reasons for their failures and successes as well as the role of international financial institutions, and the judiciary. It also looks at the innovative responses of the informal private sector to the crisis, the pros and cons of present-day government planning, and the interests of various stakeholders in the transport drama that exists today.