Islamabad Metro Airport project likely to be completed by April end

Construction work of 25.6 kilometer Peshawar More-New Islamabad Airport Metro Bus Service is going on briskly and the project is likely to be completed by end of April.

National Highway Authority (NHA) spokesman Kashif Zaman told APP that all bridges of Package I and IV have been completed while over 80 per cent bridges of Package- II and III have been completed. About under passes, he said that all under passes of the project had been completed except Package-III where 92 pc underpasses had been completed. He said all the culverts of the projects had been completed.

About overall progress, he said that over 80 per cent progress had been achieved on civil works of first three packages while the 94 per cent progress has been achieved of the last package.

It is worth a mention that for ensuring timely completion, the project has been divided into four packages including Package I from Peshawar More to NUST, Package II from NUST to GT Road, Package III from G T Road to Motorway Interchange and Package IV from Motorway Interchange to New airport.

The length of Package-I is 8km, length of Package- II is 3.8km, length of Package-III is 8.3km while Package-IV has 5.5 km length, he said.

Giving breakup of the package-wise expenditure of the project, he said the cost of the four packages would be Rs 6.58 billion, 5.5 billion, Rs 1.38 billion and 1.63 billion respectively.

To a question, the NHA spokesman said that work on Packages-IV had started in June 2016, on Package-III in March 2017 and work on Packages I and II started in April 2017. The project will have 9 bus stations including NHA Station, G-10 Station, NUST Station, G-1 Station, G T Road Station, Badana Kalan Station, Peshawar-Islamabad Motorway and Islamabad-Lahore Motorway Junction Station and Airport Station.