Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan on Thursday inaugurated the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project.
Addressing the inaugural ceremony, the prime minister said that the project will help reduce pressure and traffic jams on the roads of Peshawar and also reduce pollution and petrol wastage caused by traffic jams.
He claimed that the Peshawar BRT project is the best metro bus project in the country.
PM Khan said that the BRT project is 27 kilometres (km) long with 60km of feeder routes which will connect the entire city of Peshawar.
The prime minister further said that he had reservations regarding the BRT project in the beginning however, he pursued the project on the insistence of the former Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) chief minister Pervez Khattak, adding that the decision turned out to be successful.
PM said that tickets for the Peshawar BRT range from Rs10 to Rs50 and are easily affordable by the common man adding that special tickets will be provided to students and that hospitals haven’t been connected via BRT to facilitate travellers.
According to reports, the Peshawar BRT has been built at a cost of Rs70 billion and constitutes a 27.5km track, 31 stations, seven feeder routes stretching 62km and 146 stops. The project is expected to serve thousands of passengers on a daily basis.
Earlier on Tuesday, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Labour and Culture Shaukat Yousafzai said that despite Covid-19 pandemic, KP Chief Minister (CM) Mehmood Khan supervised and ensured round-the-clock work on BRT, owing to which the project was completed without further delay.
“This is a big project that has been completed with transparency,” he maintained.
The minister claimed that no one can prove corruption in the project and if the opposition has any evidence of corruption, it should bring it forth and CM Khan will himself punish those involved in corruption.
“The first 200,000 BRT ZU cards are being distributed free to the public,” he informed.
“Apart from the general public, women and students will benefit the most from BRT who will travel in comfort and safety.”
The project was originally started by the former KP CM Pervez Khattak in October 2017. At the time, the project was expected to be completed within six months at a cost of Rs49 billion.
However, design changes and delays caused an increase of more than Rs17 billion in the project’s cost while the project missed its initial deadline.
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