The Orange Line Metro Train, built by China, travels through Lahore in May 2018. Experts question whether Beijing would support Punjab province’s proposed high-speed railway. © Reuters
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s provincial government of Punjab recently unveiled plans to build a multibillion-dollar high-speed railway linking the capital region to Lahore, the country’s second-largest city.
Although officials are touting the ambitious infrastructure development, experts consider the proposal unrealistic, citing financial constraints and a lack of interest from major foreign partners such as China.
The chief minister of Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, gave preliminary approval to start the Lahore-Rawalpindi high-speed rail project, according to a statement issued by the government in the last week of April. “Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif was also briefed in detail by the relevant authorities on the first bullet train project from Lahore to Rawalpindi,” the statement read. “The journey time from Lahore to Rawalpindi [by] bullet train will be reduced to about two and a half hours,” compared with around five hours at present by local train.
“She directed the authorities responsible to take steps for the launch of Pakistan’s first bullet train project,” the statement said, referring to the chief minister, who is Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s niece.
Rawalpindi is in Punjab, while Islamabad is the Capital Territory. But due to their proximity, Rawalpindi is called Islamabad’s twin city.
“This is the first time in Pakistan’s history that a provincial government is launching its own bullet train network,” Azma Bokhari, Punjab’s information minister, recently told reporters. A working group has been formed to prepare a feasibility study and construction timeline for the project.
The existing rail line between Rawalpindi and Lahore is 280 kilometers long, and trains operating on the line average 65 kilometers per hour. According to experts, the global benchmark for a high-speed train is over 300 kph. However, they put the cost of laying a new track for a high-speed train, buying rolling stock and building infrastructure at more than $10 billion.
Riaz Rashid, a mechanical engineer who has worked on the North-South Railway Project in Saudi Arabia, said the cost of building new high-speed rail infrastructure, including rolling stock, depends mainly on the geography of the railway and the cost of equipment supplied by the manufacturing country.
“The range is quite wide, from $20 million to $50 million per kilometer,” he told Nikkei Asia. “It will take at least five to seven years to establish a whole new infrastructure for the bullet train from scratch,” Rashid added.
Financial experts also warn of the cost of financing a high-speed rail project. Such a project “would require huge foreign funding, and hardly anyone, including China, would be willing to pay the government for a project that lacks any sound technical and financial feasibility report by a team of competent people,” Ikram ul Haq, who runs a legal and tax consultancy.
Pakistan “lacks adequate engineering expertise to build, operate and maintain such a sophisticated system,” he said, adding, “The topography of the route is not supportive of a bullet train, due to uneven terrain.”
A couple of government officials told Nikkei that Pakistan might seek technical help from foreign countries, including China and Japan, but nothing is decided yet.
“Given Pakistan’s fiscal constraints, I don’t think the Chinese would support this project under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),” said Moonis Ahmar, a professor of international relations at the University of Karachi. The CPEC is the Pakistani portion of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
A passenger train passes under a bridge in Karachi: Backers of Punjab’s proposed high-speed rail line say it would cut the trip from Lahore to Rawalpindi in half, to two and a half hours. © ReutersThe $6.8 billion ML-1 railway upgrade taking place under the CPEC has been stalled for a decade, mainly due to funding issues. This raises doubts about the feasibility of an even more expensive high-speed rail venture.
A spokesperson for Pakistan Railways said that the company would only provide technical support for the project, and that all the matters related to finance and development would be handled by the Punjab government.
Experts also question the rationale of making Lahore, which is deep in the interior of the country, the starting point for a high-speed rail line, rather than the port city of Karachi. “If we look at the introduction of the high-speed rail project from a Pakistani perspective, the logical starting point would be Karachi, and then [to] work up to the north,” said Rashid, the mechanical engineer.
The article appeared in the asia.nikkei