As you leave your department building at the end of another long, tiring day of classes, you aren’t sure what to do. You pull out your phone and open the app you usually use to call a taxi. You change your mind and put your phone back in your bag. Then you walk toward the main exit gate of the Institute of Business Management (IoBM) building in Korangi.
You recently read that the Red Peoples Bus Service and the Pink Peoples Bus Service were going to Ibrahim Hyderi and back on a new path that went by where you lived. Should you give it a try?
When you walk through the gate, you see a few rickshaws waiting for you. One or two rickshaw drivers may wave at you in hopes that you will want to ride with them. No, friend, not this time. You are looking for… no, you are waiting for something else. If it doesn’t show up, you might think about taking a bicycle or using an app on your phone. But let’s be a little patient here.
Then you realize it. As soon as you see the building, you notice the high pink roof. You put up your hand to tell it to stop. As it changes lanes to get to you, the light flashes to let you know.
When the doors open, you walk into a cool heaven with lots of places to sit. You’ve never been on a bus before. In fact, you’ve never been on a bus before. But this isn’t a bus; it’s a cool heaven. You ask the driver how much the ride will cost. She smiles and says, “Sit down and take it easy. I’ll come to you.”
When she does come, she gives you a ticket that says Rs 50 for any path, any distance. Wow! The rickshaw wouldn’t have taken less than Rs 400, and the taxi you were going to call would have wanted more than twice that.
When a woman waves for the bus to stop, it does, just like it did for you. Some of the people on board are already used to it. A young woman waiting outside another university board sits down and pulls out a book and hands-free headphones. Another young woman connects her phone to a charger on the bus. When someone needs to get off the bus, they press a button between every two seats, and the bus stops. But the director is also very careful. If you ask her to, she will tell the driver to stop.
You can’t believe you were on a bus in Karachi when you get off at your stop. And what a nice, quiet, and cool Karachi bus. This city is just starting to learn what it’s like to take buses like the Green Line, Orange Line, and Peoples Bus Service (Red Bus) to get to work. And now, the Pink Peoples Bus Service, which is a cool, calm, and clean place to be. No one is pushing or shoving, screaming, or getting scared. Even when there is only standing room, these buses are made in a way that makes standing easy.
When something good happens in our country, your first thought is, “What if the service is taken away?” The Green Line came first, more than a year ago. One by one, the other lines followed, and they are now going along their routes. The Peoples Bus Service and the Pink Bus both run on our roads. The Green Line and the Orange Line, on the other hand, have their own tracks. The only thing that makes the Pink Bus different is that it only serves women.
Shoaib Rafiq, who is in charge of projects at the National Radio and Telecommunications Corporation (NRTC), says that the cars will stay. He says that at first, they were trying to help women who travel alone and people who can’t always pay for taxis. But now, women who can afford a cab also ride the Pink Bus. “Women who are traveling with their husbands, kids, or other mehram can always take any of the other buses with both mehram and non-mehram passengers. Rafiq says, “The Pink Bus is for women who travel alone.” “Because they are traveling with other women, they feel safe.”
One only needs to think back to the attack on the police offices on Shahrah-e-Faisal in February 2023 to see what kind of security the Pink Bus has. Rafiq says, “Because of the accident, all traffic on Shahrah-e-Faisal stopped.” But the Pink Bus was allowed to go through because the officials knew it was full of women.
Rafiq says that the idea for the Pink Bus came about because “so many women were reaching out to us because they had problems riding the same buses as men.” They wanted a bus that would only take women. We made a suggestion, and Transport Minister Sharjeel Memon liked it and made a choice almost right away. But we also had to think about what was good and bad about it.
The Pink Bus is not the first way to get around that only women can use. In fact, there have been women-only car services in the past, but they didn’t last long. Taxis are expensive, and most women who can afford them don’t take them very often because they have their own cars. Rafiq says, “The people we help can’t afford to pay for a taxi every day.”
The Pink Bus started running on February 1, 2023, and there are more and more lines. At the moment, Karachi has 20 Pink Buses going on three routes. In Hyderabad, there are now two more buses, and Rafiq says, “We are looking at demand and evaluating other routes.”
The Pink Bus is currently driven by men, but Rafiq says that they have already chosen about 25 women to be potential drivers. If they are hired, they will get training, and “by the end of March, the Pink Bus will be giving women jobs.”
Rafiq thinks that the price of the fare will go up. “The ticket costs Rs 50 right now, but it will probably go up because diesel has become very expensive.” We are also looking at branding and marketing as ways to keep the business going. We’re also looking for a loan from the government, but we’ll see.”
Secretary of Mass Transport for the Government of Sindh, Abdul Haleem Shaikh, says that they are working with the NRTC on plans to keep the fee low. “The job of the government is to serve the public. “We are willing to give at least Rs 50 million each month if the price of diesel goes up by more than 5%,” he says.
The Sindh Government wanted to send the Pink Bus to other towns in the province. But if Hyderabad is any indication, this might not happen. Shaikh says, “The women there are not women from big cities. They move with their families, and there aren’t that many working or college-aged women in Hyderabad. This doesn’t mean we’ll stop going there, but we might not add more service.”
Even though the Pink Bus did well in Karachi, it is clear from Hyderabad that each city is different.