Islamabad: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) prized Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Peshawar has won the “Best Smart Ticketing Programme” award for 2022 by Transport Ticketing Global. The award recognizes BRT’s operator Zu Peshawar’s efforts to improve the lives of many people through innovative solutions. This is the second award in a year that Peshawar BRT has won.
In February, the BRT had received the Gold Standard Service award from the Technical Committee of the BRT Standards in ‘environment-friendly services’ to the people of the provincial capital.
More than 200,000 journeys made daily
According to the criteria for award, the network to which the programme applies should serve 200,000 or more daily journeys. The award takes into account user adoption, duration, sustainability, and any other factors that make the project stand out.
The winners were announced during the 10th annual awards ceremony which took place in London. The Best Ticketing Programme award recognises a public transport authority and their technology partner that have launched a successful smart ticketing programme in the last 2 years.
BRT Peshawar: A brief history
The KP government where the PTI has been in power since 2013 had started work on BRT in October 2017 and claimed it would go operational in one year. However, the project was hit by a number of mismanagement and delays and finally former Prime Minister Imran Khan launched it on August 13, 2020.
The BRT was inaugurated by then Chief Minister of the province Pervaiz Khattak in 2020 after a delay of around three years.
TransPeshawar won among a group of finalists which included JakLingko, Thales, and Jatelindo Perkasa Abadi (Indonesia), MetroRio (Brazil), The South Australian Public Transport Authority (SAPTA) (Australia), Cubic Transportation System and MTA (New York), Opal Digital Card and Contactless Transport Payments (New South Wales) and Innoforce (Kazakhstan).
