TRANSPORTATION
Roads:
National Highways
During the 1990s, Pakistan began an ongoing project to rebuild all national highways throughout the country specifically to important financial, cargo and textile centers. The National Highway Authority or NHA is responsible for the maintenance of all national highways in Pakistan.
- The Makran Coastal Highway follows the coast of Sindh and Balochistan provinces, linking Karachi and Gwadar. Journey time has been reduced to six or seven hours with the construction of the new Coastal Highway. The highway was built as part of an overall plan to improve transport facilities in southern Balochistan.
- The Karakoram Highway is the highest paved international road in the world. It connects China and Pakistan across the Karakoram mountain range, through the Khunjerab Pass.
- The Grand Trunk Road (commonly abbreviated to GT Road) is one of South Asia's oldest and longest major roads. For several centuries, it has linked the eastern and western regions of the South Asia, running from Bengal, across north India, into Peshawar in Pakistan.
- The Silk Road is an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian continent connecting East, South, and Western Asia with the Mediterranean world, including North Africa and Europe. It passes through the mid section of Pakistan through cities: Peshawar, Taxila and Multan.
Motorways
The construction of motorways began in the early 1990s with the idea building a world class road network and to reduce the load off the heavily used national highways throughout the country. The M2 was the first motorway completed in 1998, linking the cities of Islamabad and Lahore. In the past 5 years, many new motorways have opened up including the M1, M3.
- Total: 257,683 km
- Paved: 152,033 km (including 339 km of expressways)
- Unpaved: 105,650 km (2001)
- Vehicles on road: 4.2 million vehicles 250,000 commercial vehicles (2004 estimate)
Railroads:
Pakistan Railways (reporting mark PR) is a national state-owned rail transport service of Pakistan, head-quartered in Lahore. It is administered by the federal government under the Ministry of Railways. PR provides an important mode of transportation throughout Pakistan. It is commonly referred to as the "life line of the country", by aiding in large scale movement of people and freight throughout Pakistan. The current chairman is Sami-ul-Haq Khilji.
Mass Transit
The Karachi Circular Railway, which opened in the early 1940s, is the only functioning Mass Transit System in Pakistan as of date. In 1976, Karachi was slated to begin work on an underground metro system, but plans have been put on hold since. The Lahore Metro is another proposal still in planning and is scheduled to be completed by 2020.
International
- Iran - A broad gauge railway line runs from Zahedan to Quetta, and a standard gauge line is finished from Zahedan to Kerman in central Iran, linking with the rest of the Iranian rail network. On May 18, 2007, a MOU for rail cooperation was signed by Pakistan and Iran under which the line will be completed by December 2008. Now that the rail systems are linked up at Zahedan, there is a break-of-gauge between the Islamic Republic of Iran Railways standard gauge tracks and Pakistan Railways broad gauge.
- Afghanistan - Currently there is no rail link to Afghanistan since no railway network is present in that country, however Pakistan Rail has proposed to help build a Afghani Rail Network in three phases. The first phase will stretch from the Chaman to Spin Boldak in Afghanistan. The second phase will extend line to Kandahar and the third phase will eventually connect to Herat. From there, the line will be extended to Khushka, Turkmenistan. The final phase would link 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) gauge with Central Asian 1,520 mm (4 ft 11 5/6 in) gauge. It is not clear where the break-of-gauge station will be. The proposed line will also be connected the port town of Gwadar via Dalbadin and Taftan, thus connecting the port town to Central Asia.
- China - There is no link with China however, on February 28, 2007 contracts were awarded for feasibility studies on a proposed line from Havelian via the Khunjerab pass at 4730 m above sea level, to the Chinese railhead at Kashgar, a distance of about 750 km.
- Turkey - A proposed Istanbul-Tehran-Islamabad passenger rail service was proposed recently. Meanwhile a container train service was launched by the Prime Minister of Pakistan Yousuf Raza Gilani between Islamabad and Istanbul on 14 August 2009. The first train carried 20 containers with a capacity of around 750 t (738 LT; 827 ST) and will travel 6,500 km (4,000 mi) from Islamabad, through Tehran, Iran and on to Istanbul in two weeks' time. According to the Minister for Railways Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, after the trial of the container train service, a passenger train will be launched. There are also hopes the route will eventually provide a link to Europe and Central Asia, and carry passengers.
- Turkmenistan - via Afghanistan
Aviation:
Pakistan has 139 airports. The main airport include:
- Jinnah International Airport (Karachi)
- Allama Iqbal International Airport (Lahore)
- Benazir Bhutto International Airport (Islamabad)
- Peshawar International Airport (Peshawar)
- Quetta International Airport (Quetta)
- Faisalabad International Airport (Faisalabad)
- Multan International Airport (Multan)
- Sialkot International Airport (Sialkot)
- Gwadar International Airport (Gwadar)
- Shaikh Zayed International Airport (Rahim Yar Khan)
There are also several smaller airports which have flights to and from the Gulf because of the large Pakistani diaspora working in the region. There are 91 airports with paved runways of which 14 have runways longer than 3,047 meters. The remaining 48 airports have unpaved runways including one airport with a runway longer than 3,047 meters. Pakistan also has eighteen heliports.
