The Sindh government has taken a series of significant decisions aimed at restructuring urban transport infrastructure across its major cities, with the Sindh Mass Transit Authority board meeting chaired by Senior Sindh Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon approving multiple initiatives covering electric bus procurement, depot development, and heavy vehicle management for Karachi and Hyderabad.
The most substantial approval from the meeting is the procurement of 500 electric buses to be deployed under a public-private partnership model. Of these, 450 electric buses will be placed on 25 routes across Karachi, while the remaining 50 will serve five dedicated routes in Hyderabad, extending the province’s electric public transport coverage beyond the provincial capital. To support the operational requirements of this expanded fleet, the board also approved the establishment of five modern electric vehicle depots across Sindh, with four to be located in Karachi and one in Hyderabad, providing the maintenance and charging infrastructure necessary to keep the buses running efficiently across both cities.
In a parallel development, the board gave the go-ahead for the construction of a modern heavy vehicle terminal for trucks, trailers, and other large transport vehicles to be built outside Karachi on the Northern Bypass. A dedicated heavy vehicle track will also be laid from Karachi Port to the Northern Bypass as part of the same project, designed to route heavy commercial traffic away from the city’s main road network. Sharjeel Memon stated that the initiative is intended to ease traffic congestion within Karachi and bring much-needed order to the movement of freight vehicles that currently share space with regular commuter traffic through the city’s busiest corridors.
Taken together, these approvals represent a coordinated push by the Sindh government to modernise urban mobility across the province, addressing both public commuter needs through electric buses and freight-related congestion through dedicated heavy transport infrastructure, with Hyderabad increasingly being brought into the fold alongside Karachi as a focus city for mass transit investment.
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