Karachi's existing public transport system has only 4.5% of the total vehicles fleet and serves about 42% of the commuter's demand. The majority used the private vehicles for commuting, which are estimated 36% of the total vehicular traffic however contains only 21% of the passengers. Another mode is para-transit (Rickshaw, Taxis) are about 10% of the vehicles on road and comparatively picking up 8% of the total customer which is good numbers of customers as of its size.
Another mode is contract carriages 2% of the vehicle fleets however carry 10% of the total passengers. The buses carry majority of the commuters which is about 5.6 million per day, accounting of 42% of the total motorized travel modes. There are approximately 21,800 buses registered and operated on road, which means a bus carries an average 257 passenger per day.
The disparities in various modes of transport and passengers they are commuting are due to absence of the comprehensive transportation system, heavy burden on the inadequate public transport, no dedicate lanes or any other traffic management, a government study indicates.
The study conducted by CPEC Center of Excellence suggested that as the demand of the KCR increases, based on its effective, efficient operations and maintenance, it is expected and understandable that the commuting pressure on existing road traffic will reduce due to mode shifting and passenger will transfer from the existing modes to the KCR.
KCR will be operated in 6 sets of locomotives with capacity of 17,520 trips per hour per direction (tphpd), the initial demand was forecasted at 14, 524 tphpd and the system has the reserved capacity of approximately 17%. As the demand will increase over the span of time (long-term demand), the system will carry 23,421 tphpd, to control this number of peak house trains (pairs) shall be increased, with maximum designed transport capacity being 26,280 tphpd.
The population of Karachi increased rapidly. Natural growth, development, rural migration towards urban areas, migration due to climate impacts are the factors that caused serious increase in population and thus the need of commuting services also increases.
Financial institutions provided financing and loan facilities for public to buy cars. This becomes a major loss as people prefer their own car instead of travel by mass transit. However, the reopening of KCR should not be a standalone solution in the overall transport problems for Karachi but must integrate with other priority plans in order that the future travel needs, it proposes.
In this respect, the KCR project should integrate with the wider transportation plans of the city and provincials governments and its priority transport corridors plan. The KCR, in itself may not possess the capacity of acting as the prime mover of commuter traffic in Karachi. Nonetheless, it has a sound potential of linking up with other modes of regular and mass transit systems to provide sustainable, environment friendly, efficient and affordable means of transport.
As KCR becomes the part of CPEC people of Karachi have high hopes to see KCR running within few years, study concludes.