Pakistan’s first metro train line opens in Lahore

A newly built Orange Line Metro Train (OLMT), a metro project planned under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), drives through on a track after its official opening in Pakistan's eastern city of Lahore on Oct. 25, 2020. (AFP)

• A quarter of a million people are expected to travel through the metro train in Pakistan’s second biggest city
• Construction of the China funded metro was mired in controversy over the years, with forced evictions and the endangerment of historical sites

LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar inaugurated the country’s first metro train line, the Orange Line, in Lahore on Sunday, with train services to begin for the public on Monday.
Part-funded by China, the Orange Line is a rapid mass transit system that the government hopes will ease travel in Pakistan’s second largest city where over 11 million people live.
A quarter of a million people are expected to use the 27 km train track for travel every day.
The construction of the Orange Line, which began in 2015, has been mired in controversy over the years, leading to forced evictions and threatening a large number of Lahore’s protected heritage sites, historic buildings and minority places of worship.
The Imran Khan led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf, which was in opposition when work on the metro began, had vociferously opposed the construction of the project kickstarted by the previous Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government.
In 2016, campaigners and the United Nations succeeding in getting the track’s construction temporarily halted in a bid to protect 11 buildings of historical value.
The Orange Line Metro Train is the first transport project under the $60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), central to China’s Belt and Road Initiative to develop land and sea trade routes in Asia and beyond.
Public transport remains inadequate across most Pakistani cities and a rapidly urbanising population has left roads choked with traffic.