Metro bus service between Peshawar Mor and New Islamabad International Airport (NIIA) will be tested by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) in mid-April.
According to the plan, 24 buses will run from Peshawar Mor to the N5 bus station on GT Road, and six buses with extra luggage storage will run round the clock uninterruptedly from N5 to the airport.
CDA has ordered 30 buses in total from a Chinese bus maker, half of which are set to be shipped to Pakistan and the remaining are in the final phase of manufacturing.
To prevent more delays, the National Highway Authority (NHA) will conduct pre-shipment inspections of the available buses via third parties because of Chinese COVID-19 restrictions. The orange, 12-meter-long buses are likely to arrive in Pakistan in the middle of April, after which the CDA will road test them with manual ticketing because of the delayed installment of the automated systems.
NHA had begun working on the Rs. 16 billion project for the 25.6-km track from Peshawar Mor to Islamabad International Airport in January 2017. The civil work on the project was meant to be finalized in August 2018 but it was finished earlier this year. The metro track’s corridors and stations have already been built and now require the completion of the command and control, station administration, cleaning, security, and the ticketing system.
After NHA had built the corridor and stations, CDA took over the project from it in March 2021 on the recommendation of the federal government.
NHA had also granted a contract for the installation of equipment on the metro track but it was later terminated due to certain reasons. It has now placed a new tender with a bid deadline of 10 March.
Besides procuring the services of a bus operator, the NHA has also advertised for contract-based employees to run the operations for the metro bus service.
