Karachi Has the World’s Worst Public Transport: Bloomberg

The public transport of Karachi has been identified as the worst in the world by internationally acclaimed magazine Bloomberg. The magazine published a report where it went into detail about what makes the city’s public transport the worst in the world.

The report highlights that the local public transport of the biggest city in Pakistan was once among the most modern in the world. It mentions the time when a localized railway encircled the city and provided a daily transport facility within the city to the public of Karachi, but the ongoing corruption, mismanagement, and clashes of interest seized all positive momentum in the development of the city in the late 1990s.
The report further went on to emphasize that Karachi’s public transport system ranks as the worst in the entire world, adding that the condition of the roads, the enforcement, and the abidance of rules are all in a terrible state. The public transport in the city consists of the popular ‘Omni Buses’ that barely fit the bill for suitable transport, especially for females.

Speaking with regards to the reason for the terrible state of the public transport in Karachi, Arsalan Ali Faheem, a consultant at DAI – a Maryland-based company that advises on development projects – aptly stated that, “Karachi, despite its importance, is a political orphan,” hinting that the country’s biggest commercial hub has fallen victim to numerous clashes of political nature, being completely forsaken of all positive development over the years amid the chaos.
Remarking upon the issue of road encroachments and illegal slums on the derelict local railway network, a researcher at the Washington D.C.-based Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Adam Weinstein said, “Karachi has yet to find a humane way to address land encroachment that stymies development and relocate people without incurring immense political blowback”.

The rising population and the stagnant state of check and balance pose a fair few questions in terms of the development of Karachi. Plus, with its public transport now internationally regarded as the worst in the world, the city is on the receiving end of a lot of negative attention from the entire world.

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