By Jawad Ahmed ISLAMABAD, Jan. 19 (INP-WealthPK): Pakistan has witnessed one of the fastest urbanisation over the past few decades, among the South Asian region, stretching out the services delivery to the teeming millions. The major attractions behind this fast-paced rural to urban migration can be attributed to an enhanced economic activity, better housing, better schooling and better job opportunities in cities, to name a few. However, due to this influx, cities and other urban centres have grown beyond their administrative limits. According to the UN, over 37% of the total population in Pakistan lives in urban areas, and this figure is expected to increase to 50% by 2050. According to the world body, currently 55% of the world population is living in urban areas, and the figure is expected to rise to 68% by 2050. The UN figures illustrate that around 2.5 billion people worldwide may relocate to urban areas, with Asia and Africa accounting for 90% of this growth. A majority of Pakistan's urban population is concentrated in eight cities, including Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Multan, Hyderabad, Gujranwala, and Peshawar. This massive flight of people from the countryside to urban centres is resulting in a growing dearth of essential services such as clean drinking water, schooling, healthcare, and others, putting the policymakers in a quandary. During the last decades or so, the successive governments have launched a few mass transit projects to ease out one of the major challenges this rural-to-urban migration has given rise to provide a decent and affordable means of public transportation to the teeming millions. The province of Punjab took the precedence in this regard by launching a project back in 2013 to develop a modern road infrastructure and provide comfortable, quick and low-cost transportation means to the urban areas of the province. The flagship Lahore Metro Bus Service was also a project that went a long way in addressing the public transportation needs in a metropolis like Lahore. Afterwards, this project was replicated in Rawalpindi, Multan, Peshawar and Karachi. Initially, the governments in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh had opposed the metro bus projects on the premise that these projects required huge investments. However, the success of the bus service in Lahore encouraged the KPK and Sindh governments to also launch their own metro bus services to provide ease of travel to their citizens. Similarly, the Punjab province also took the lead in launching the country’s first modern overhead train service with the name of Orange Line Metro Train, in Lahore, in 2020.   List of Urban Transit Systems in Pakistan (Since 2013)

Project Name	Province	Status	Year	Length (KM)	No. of Stations
Lahore Metro Bus Service	Punjab	Operational	2013	27	27
Rawalpindi-Islamabad Metro Bus	Punjab	Operational	2015	22.5	24
Multan Metro Bus	Punjab	Operational	2017	18.2	18
Green Line Bus Service	Sindh	Operational	2021	21	22
Peshawar Metro Bus	KPK	Operational	2021	27	32
Faisalabad Metro Bus	Punjab	Planned	2018	30	28

  Prime Minister Imran Khan launched the Green Line Bus Service in Karachi in December 2021. According to official figures, the Green Line Bus will facilitate around 135,000 commuters daily. Launching of the metro bus services is no doubt a praise-worthy step in view of the growing urbanisation. Such services are also needed in other cities to meet the burgeoning public transport needs. However, metro bus services only cover a fraction of the cities, where they have been launched, so the authorities also need to focus on those areas, where still a large majority of people does not have any means of public transport.