GHOTKI AND KANDHKOT BRIDGE

Travel Demand Forecasting of Proposed Link Road between Ghotki and KandhKot

In Pakistan, approximately 80% of the population resides in rural areas or small cities and hence national transportation network has to be planned considering the travel needs (or demand) of such population as well. N5 and N55 are the national highways traversing the cities of Sukkur and Shikarpur respectively. N5 highway after crossing through Sukkur also traverse the small cities of Ghotki and Pannu Akil and similarly the N55 highway after traversing the city of Shikarpur crosses through Kandhkot. These highways are connected with each other via Sukkur Bypass and Guddu bypass.

In order to travel from Kandhkot to Ghotki (and vice versa), currently the people have two options which take them approximately four hours to negotiate this distance. First option is to travel through Sukkur bypass and the second option is through Guddu barrage. This amount of effort and time can be economized if there is a direct route connection between the two cities.

Furthermore, the traffic heading towards Peshawar, Lahore, Jacobabad, Dadu and Karachi does not have considerable number of options to travel between N5 and N55 highways and such proposed facility can be fruitful to cater this traffic. Another worth mentioning perspective will be the freight logistics with in Pakistan that utilizes the road infrastructure more than any other transport modes. This utilization of road infrastructure is intensifying with the passage of time and hence the need of expanding infrastructure is more than ever.

The objective of this study is to estimate the travel demand of the proposed facility between Ghotki and Kandhkot through collecting the traffic data and recording the travel patterns.