A journey along the abandoned Karachi Circular Railway

The first few paragraphs convey exactly how I've personally experienced Karachi as someone from Lahore. It's a wonderfully clean, or incredibly polluted, well managed or a completely broken down city, with beautifully complex and horridly broken bridges which is fairly safe, or so unsafe that I should avoid wearing a business suit or carrying a moderately expensive phone.

The people I've interacted with are usually either very educated, or not at all, and either health conscious or addicted to chewing tobacco (or whatever the "gutka" really is). Incidentally, I've heard that the gutka is a just chewing tobacco, or a mix of cigarette tobacco, battery acid, and animal blood.. all when I asked someone in Karachi.

But hey, atleast everyone in Karachi agrees that their food is better than Lahore's. However, much like everyone in Lahore, I believe they're mistaken.

> At its peak in the mid-1970s, the Karachi Circular Railway served 6 million passengers annually, but by the end of its first decade, the system was already in decline. 52 High maintenance costs and unstable funding prevented investments in the infrastructure necessary to keep up with population growth. There was no grade separation at many street intersections, and traffic congestion slowed the train as the city grew, which in turn led to lower ridership and a downward spiral in revenue. These pressures continued through the 1980s and 1990s, as the railway also faced a rash of transit crime, ticketless riders, and competition with new transport options. By 1998 the KCR was making only twelve trips a day, and traveling no faster than a walking pace in some sections. The next year it was shut down.

6 million annually to 0! Wow that is really sad :(.

I grew up in Mumbai, which is considered a sister-city to Karachi. I remember the suburban rail (which is a lifeline of the city used by millions to commute everyday) being neglected and frequently late. But when I was in high school, something changed: the trains were cleaner, started to be on time consistently and so on. Then they upgraded from the ancient rail stock to more modern cars today. And the system continue to hum along.

I wonder what caused one of the systems' precipitous decline while the other one continues to run.

The first eight paragraphs of that are probably the most interesting and illustrative way of describing a problem without directly stating it I have ever read. It is incredibly effective.

I met a journalist from Karachi once. Did some traveling together. They were telling me how the population of Karachi is widely disputed, how people throw different numbers around all the time and the real number is hard to determine. Judging by this article, that's a common problem for a lot of information in Karachi. I'd guess that's due to political instability in the region preventing accurate information gathering and distribution. I find that to be the more interesting part of this story.

I live in Karachi and I have seen how the Circular Railway was dragged to a rusty death. The land grabbers, the transport mafia and corrupt officials all played their part in the tragic demise of Karachi Circular Railway.