ISLAMABAD: With Islamabad’s civic agency officials tasked with facilitating the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA) to execute the metro bus service project, work on launching a bus service in the federal capital has been put on the back burner.

More than a month has passed since the CDA received expressions of interest from five parties to operate the bus service. However, so far only the financial and technical assessments of the project have been made.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA) had on March 10 decided to float tenders within one week for the IBS. It was also decided that one company would be invited to operate each of the three routes of the bus service.

The three proposed routes were: Rawat to Federal Secretariat, I-10 to Secretariat and Bhara Kahu to Secretariat.

“The main issue is that, the officials concerned in the planning and the engineering departments are too preoccupied with streamlining the metro bus project,” said a senior official of the planning department who declined to be named.The delay in the launch of the IBS is also causing delay in the redesigning of the routes to adjust the wagons already operating on the main routes between Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

“There is also a serious concern that neither the metro bus nor the three local IBS routes would be catering to the public transport requirements from Zero Point to Melody,” said the official.

Meanwhile, the wagon operators have also expressed concerns about their future after the two mass transit projects are launched.

“We approached the transport departments in both Rawalpindi and Islamabad to know if they wanted to kick us out of business from next year when the metro bus will be operational,” said Haji Nawab Khan, the president of one of the local transporters associations.

However, he seemed satisfied with the reply but declined to elaborate the details of the plans shared with him by the authorities concerned.

Officials in the CDA said they were redesigning the local wagon routes so that it covered more peripheral areas. However, they acknowledged that work on the bus project was being delayed due to excessive focus on the metro bus project.

“We have a plan for the existing transporters and that is to open routes to cater to commuters from one Markaz to another. But we need time to study the options,” the officials added.

They said they were under stress, adding recently the RDA lodged a complaint with the political leadership in Lahore that the CDA was not wholeheartedly cooperating with them.

As opposed to the metro bus service launched by the Punjab government, the CDA would not be making any investment in the buses or provide subsidies to operate the project.