Multan electric bus service starts with 45 buses on six routes

Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif inaugurated Multan's electric bus service on Thursday. The first phase puts 45 electric buses on six routes in the city.

The six routes

• Vehari Chowk to Nishtar Hospital
• Ghanta Ghar to Ibn-e-Sina Hospital
• Dera Adda to the e-Khidmat Centre, via DHA and Women University
• Chowngi No. 9 to Nag Shah and the NADRA Abad railway crossing
• Vehari Chowk to Qasim Bela
• Ghanta Ghar to Qadirpur Raan

Three things stand out about that list. Two routes end at major hospitals, which is the single heaviest daily trip for low-income households in Multan and the one currently served by rickshaws at a price that hurts. One route is built around a government services centre and a women's university, and two run out to Qasim Bela and Qadirpur Raan, which pulls in traffic from the edge of the city rather than only moving people inside it.

How far it goes

Phase one for Multan Division is 160 electric buses across different cities and areas. The full project is expected to reach 205 buses once implemented.

So the 45 buses running now are roughly a fifth of what has been announced, and Multan city is the first slice of a divisional plan. That is worth holding on to when the service feels thin in the first weeks: the frequency on any one route depends on how many of the remaining buses arrive and how fast.

Fares and timings

The fare and the daily operating hours were not announced at the inauguration, and no card or app has been named. Punjab's other electric and metro bus services run on a flat-fare card system, but until Multan's operator publishes its own schedule of charges, the fare here is not settled and we will not guess at it. We will update this story when the notified fare is out.

What it replaces

The practical comparison for a Multan commuter is not the old bus, it is the rickshaw and the motorcycle. A daily rickshaw run to Nishtar and back is the sort of cost that does not show up in any inflation number but eats a household budget, and a motorcycle costs fuel at Rs 390.79 a litre.

If you are weighing the bus against keeping the bike running, work out what the bike actually costs you first. Our fuel cost calculator turns your daily distance and your bike's average into a monthly rupee figure, and the fuel average calculator tells you what your average really is rather than what the brochure claimed.

The electric part

Electric buses shift the running cost from diesel, currently Rs 424.92 a litre, to grid electricity, and they take the exhaust out of Multan's air at street level. The catch that has slowed these projects elsewhere in Pakistan is charging infrastructure and depot power supply: a fleet that cannot charge overnight cannot run a full schedule the next day. Whether the 45 grows to 205 depends less on buses arriving than on depots being energised.