Pod#162 - Gulraiz Khan - Why Pakistan desperately needs good public transport

As infrastructure and all facets of life in Pakistan come under more and more stress due to economic pressures, population increases and climate change; public transport is fast becoming one of the key issues the country must address sooner than later.    Lucky for us, public transport enthusiast Gulraiz Khan let himself be recruited off Twitter to come chat about Pakistan's past, present, and hopeful future in the public transport spheres.   Things discussed in this episode:   00:00 Intro  01:57 Where he grew up and why we’re doing this episode  05:44 Why public transport is being talked about in Pakistan now, and how he first got interested  12:14 Why has public transport not been prioritised in Pakistan historically?  16:53 Why did the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) just disappear?  18:57 How are the BRT systems doing in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar?  25:59 “The BRT is not profitable”, why this perspective misses the point  30:55 Talking about Karachi’s new bus services  38:51 There is no substantive discussion around infrastructure or climate change in the media  47:03 Can individual action OR TWEETING help fix these problems?  50:44 Future public transport projects being worked on in Pakistan  54:22 Quick jinn story and outro!   LINKS:  Gulraiz's Twitter: https://twitter.com/gulraizkhan  Gulraiz's writeups at Dawn: https://www.dawn.com/authors/9254/gulraiz-khan   Mahim Maher's article on Karachi's bus routes: https://tribune.com.pk/story/711471/timekeeping-and-transport-the-minute-men-of-karachi   Support the podcast by becoming a monthly patron on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/tprpod) or send a one-off token on Ko-fi (https://ko-fi.com/tprpod)!   Find all our previous episodes on SoundCloud, Spotify & Apple Podcasts and follow us all on Twitter! Links to everything below!  SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/tprpod Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6PvTahp... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tprpod/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TPRPod  Ali: https://twitter.com/themaholupper Rizwan: https://twitter.com/RizwanTakkhar Sarkhail: https://twitter.com/Sarkhail7Khan