ISLAMABAD: The National Highway Authority (NHA) anticipates that over 50,000 vehicles will be diverted daily to the M-6 Motorway from two major connecting highways.
As per a report prepared by NHA, available with The Friday Times, the anticipated traffic diversion on these two highways would be 46,233 vehicles per day. The road authority assesses diversion of 34,695 vehicles from N-5 to this motorway and 11,538 vehicles on N-55 on a daily basis.
The M-6, also called Hyderabad-Sukkur Motorway is a proposed 306 Km long 6-lane road with approved PC-I cost of Rs 400 billion.
Two major highways are linked with said planned route that are N-5 and N-55. The N-5 is an 1819 km national highway which extends from Karachi in Sindh to Torkham in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also serves as an important north-south road artery, starting from K arachi and extending through Hyderabad, Moro and Sukkur in Sindh. Likewise, N-55 also known as Indus Highway is a 1264 km long national highway that runs along the Indus River in Pakistan, connects Karachi with the northwestern city of Peshawar via Dera Ghazi Khan.
The N-5 and N-55 are on six local routes including Hyderabad to Tand Adam, Tando Adam to Hala, Hala to Nawabshah, Nawabshah to Patidan, Paitadan to Ranipur, Ranipur to Rohri Sukkur.
The road from Hyderabad to Tando Adam carries the highest volume of traffic while around 42,000 vehicles of this route are estimated to be run on said motorway via N-5 and N-55.
Overall traffic count of N-5 from Hyderabad to Rohri is 138,323 vehicles daily. The segments that are part of Sindh in these national highways are Hyderabad to Hala, Hala to Sakrand, Sakrand to Qazi Ahmed, Qazi Ahmed to Moro, Moro to Ranipur, Ranipur to Tando Masti, Tando Masti to Rohri.
Similarly, a total of 77,843 vehicles ply on N-55 from Kotri to Shikarpur. It has 8 major sections included as Kotri To pataro, Pataro to Amri, Amir More to Sehwan, Sehwan to Dadu, Dadu to Mehar Mehar to Larkana, Larkana to Ratodero and Ratodero to Shikarpur.
The M-6 project was awarded to a consortium M/s Techno-CMC-ACC a couple of years back. However, despite being given an extended period to the company, it could not show financial close. Subsequently, the contract was cancelled after fulfillments of all coddle formalities by the authorities concerned. According to a senior official at the road authority, the contractor requested revising rates as dollar rate spiked rapidly in a given period. The authority could not consider the request as it was already facing funds' discrepancies.
According to the documents, after cancellation of the awarded contract, the NHA has conducted revised cost estimation. It also has tried to explore different possibilities of implementation of this project under prevalent economic discrepancies. The authority also conducted in-house financial re-modeling for various scenarios in order to exercise this mega development project. Additionally, the project was discussed in a joint working group on communications meeting in September last year.
Moreover, the government also has approached Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Islamic Development Bank and World Bank for possible investment.
As per detailed study to break down the project by NESPAK, the M-6 motorway project is classified into five sections.
Section one is 57 km long Hyderabad-Tando Adam having estimated cost of Rs 89 billion, the 63.5 km and 64.5 km long Tando Adam-Nawabshah and Nawabshah-Naushero Feroz sections are set to cost Rs 80 billion each. Naushero Feroz-Ranipur section is 60 km long while it would cost Rs 76 billion while Ranipur–Sukkur last section of this proposed 59.6 km long road having estimated cost of Rs 75 billion. All said amounts are estimated in BOT/PPP modes.
According to the NHA, M-6 is the only missing link in Peshawar-Karachi Motorway which has a total length 1,522 km.