Friday, March 29, 2024

Karachi Circular Railway train service resumed after 20 years

Karachi Circular Railway train service resumed after 20 years
November 20, 2020

In the first phase, the train started running from Karachi city station to Marshalling Yard Pipri Railway Station.

The first circular train left the city station for Pipri at 7am this morning. 92 News team also boarded in the train. The passengers also turned towards the train to reach their destination.

"No fare was charged from the passengers on the first day while only Rs30 will be charged from tomorrow. The every citizens seems to be happy after resuming the KCR train service. The KCR train stopped in every planned station on time. The passengers boarded and left the train as per their destinations."

On the occasion, the passengers said that they were escaped from the humiliation of buses after this train service. They also demanded to restore all former routes of KCR train service.

Meanwhile, the train also left Pipri for city station at 7am in the morning. The train from city station to Pipri will now leave for city Station at 5pm. Thus, the train arriving at city station in the morning will leave for Papri at 5 pm.

It is noteworthy that the KCR ceased operations in 1999 after suffering huge losses and a lack of investment.

The resumption of the service, which had been a bone of contention between the Sindh government and the Centre, follows a warning by Supreme Court (SC) on September 24 to PR and the provincial government not to further extend the deadline for launch due to concerns about the project’s rising costs.

Work on KCR is expected to be completed in mid-2023 and is being carried out by PR and the Sindh government through a private-public partnership (PPP) with third parties. The federal government allocated Rs10.5 billion ($US 66.41m) of funding to restore the service in the 2020-2021 budget. The provincial budget also allocated Rs207 billion to the project.

When completed, the line is expected to provide between 300,000 and 500,000 passenger journeys daily.