KARACHI — Sindh Senior Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon announced on Saturday that the ongoing construction of the mixed traffic lane on Karachi’s crucial University Road axis will be finalized by the end of July.
The minister shared these project tracking details during an on-site evaluation visit to inspect the development grid of the Red Line Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project. Memon highlighted that teams from the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) have been deployed to work round-the-clock shifts to accelerate infrastructure completion along this heavily congested corridor. Accompanied by Secretary Transport Asad Zamin, CEO TransKarachi Zubair Channa, and other senior engineering officials, the minister surveyed the alignment blocks to ensure alignment with structural timelines.
Addressing the severe municipal disruptions caused by the mass transit corridor, Memon acknowledged that the general public has endured massive logistical and commuting hardships. He emphasized that the provincial administration was forced to make difficult planning decisions to overhaul the city’s transport infrastructure, expressing a formal apology to citizens for the protracted daily inconvenience.
Shifting focus to broader macroeconomic and connectivity imbalances, the senior minister criticized past central planning frameworks, asserting that major national motorway projects should have logically originated from Karachi given its status as the economic heartbeat and primary port city of Pakistan. Instead, he noted, historical network designs neglected the metropolis. Memon added that Karachi’s urban center continuously carries an extraordinary demographic burden as the geographic terminus of the country, while currently managing an acute 20% water supply deficit.
Conversely, the minister noted that the successful completion and launch of the Shahrah-i-Bhutto corridor has substantially optimized traffic flows, significantly reducing intra-provincial transit times and enhancing commuting convenience for vehicles traveling toward lower Sindh.
