A new bus imported from Turkey as part of Pakistan’s first rapid transit metrobus system passes by billboards featuring Turkish President Abdullah Gül (L) and İstanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş on the eve of its opening in Lahore. The Lahore metrobus line is expected to carry 112,000 passengers every day.
Introduced as “comfortable, affordable and safe” by local authorities, a 27-kilometer-long metrobus line serving Pakistan's second largest city, Lahore, opened on Sunday, following in the footsteps of a similar but larger project in İstanbul.
Largely popular with İstanbul residents but also much criticized -- amid growing problems due to an ever-increasing demand -- the metrobus system is expected to help Lahore, a city with a population of 11 million, take a breather from its chaotic traffic. Adopting İstanbul's metrobus system, the Lahore metrobus reduces the duration of a journey on the line from two hours to 55 minutes. Lahore has intensified investments to help alleviate traffic flow problems in the city, the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and a major hub of crossroads connecting certain large cities. Lahore had an earlier agreement with İstanbul's transportation department İstanbul Ulaşım A.Ş. to prepare for them a metrobus line project. The Pakistani authorities later signed a deal with Turkey's Albayrak Group for the construction of this project. It has been under construction for 11 months at a cost of $16 million. It is not certain whether other Pakistani cities will follow and adopt the same system.
A group of officials from Turkey and Pakistan, who were in high spirits, gathered in Lahore on Sunday to inaugurate the first metrobus line to serve this city. Turkish deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif participated in Sunday's inauguration ceremony.
Speaking at Sunday's opening, Bozdağ said Turkey expected cooperation with Pakistani authorities to increase in the years to come with new joint investment projects anticipated. Bozdağ said the Lahore metrobus line could set an example for other Pakistani cities to adopt it. As he thanked the Turkish counterparts of the project, Sharif said they are pleased to see “the largest and most modern intracity transportation project ever in Pakistan” realized.
Launched in 2007 by the İstanbul Transportation Authority (İETT) to relieve İstanbul's infamous traffic congestion, the metrobus links the city's Asian and European sides. It is preferred by thousands of people as a means of transportation every day but overcrowding and some technical problems remain a challenge for the system. The Lahore authorities said earlier that the city also planned to adopt the İstanbul metrobus's central monitoring system, which uses hundreds of remote cameras and GPS trackers to monitor bus activity.
Albayrak provides 45 buses for the Lahore line which is expected to carry 112,000 people every day. It also has the operating rights of the metrobus line for the next eight years. The company also operates four separate intracity bus lines in Lahore with another 100 buses. Local press said on Sunday the Lahore authorities would offer the metrobus service free of charge to public for its first four weeks. The city also established an online ticket purchase system for the metrobus project. Turkish private entrepreneurs have been looking to expand their presence in Lahore and Albayrak is not the only Turkish-owned business investing in the city. İstanbul Environmental Protection and Waste Materials Recycling Industry and Trade Company (İSTAÇ) last year established a sister company in Lahore, the LWMC, and started a tender to undertake the waste management of the city. The tender offered two separate contracts and two Turkish companies Albayrak and Özkartallar Şirketler Grubu each won a tender with a total amount of $310 million for seven years.
Lahore's very own