Environment friendly public transport vital for improving air quality, mobility of people.

PESHAWAR -- Instead of enjoying fragrance of red roses, jasmine and others spring flowers; Peshawarties were exposed to inhale polluted air mostly emanating from tsunami of unregistered rickshaws, taxis and old passengers' vehicles.

Once known a city of flowers, is now being faced with grave issue of air pollution and traffic jams - causing thick smoke and deafening noise of horns testing nerves of over two million people. Before iftaar, long queues of traffic is often being witnessed in Hastnagri, Firdus, Shoba, Dabgari Garden, Ganj, Kohati and Gulbahar, forcing many people to break the fast on roads due to the traffic mess.

Dabgari Garden, a hub of private hospitals, doctors clinics and diagnostic laboratories where patients come for treatment from across the country wait for hours to make a way due to traffic jams causing mental agony. Patients in ambulances with their blaring sirens are also seen stranded in roads leading to Lady Reading Hospital and GT Road between Hastnagri and Firdus in unruly traffic.

The narrowness of GT road due to construction of BRT corridor, blocking of 'suray bridge' often by the demonstrators in front of KP Assembly and VVIP movement were hampering smooth flow of traffic while creating difficulty for civil secretariat employees to reach their office in time.

"Traffic jam has made our life miserable. On Friday last, I along with my family left Dabgari Garden at 5:00 p.m and reached general bus stand at 6:45p.m by covering the thirty minutes distance in nearly one hour and 45 minutes due to massive traffic jam on GT Road between Hastnagri and Fridus," said Qaiser Khan, a retired government employee and resident of Nowshera while talking to reporter.

"It was my worst and nerve breaking experience I had in Peshawar since my retirement last year. My knees started to hurt due to excessive use of clutch and brakes during driving in massive traffic jam," he added.

Qaiser, while terming Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) service as good addition in transport service in Peshawar, said its buses were often overloaded after scrapping of old buses and wagons on its route, resultantly most of passengers in BRT have to travel from Peshawar City to Hayatabad without a seat due to shortage of buses.

He said widening of GT road near Hastnagri and Firdus, ban on smoke emitting rickshaws and without permit taxis and increasing BRT buses was imperative to address problem of traffic congestion and combat air pollution.

KP Transport...