Sustainable Development of Pakistan Railways Being an Environment-friendly Mode of Transportation

Abstract

               Pakistan Railways is the largest federal organization to offer transport services for passengers and cargo. The significance of this enterprise is increased due to its characteristic of environment friendly mode of transportation. As the transportation world is run through some kind of fuel, mitigation of the adverse effects of the fuel on environment is a big challenge for the concerned authorities. Pakistan Railways is making great effort to play its role as a sustainable and environment-friendly mode of transport across the country. The sustainability of this organization solely depends on its revenue generation and this revenue generation is affected by certain factors. To analyze this sustainability, the relation between economic growth, inflation, and passenger revenue of Pakistan Railways is estimated. Time series data of twenty (20) years (1999-2018) is used, derived from the database of the World Bank's World Data Indicator. The Granger causality test is used to find out the correlation among any two or more variables. Empirical results indicate that there is no casual relation between economic growth and passenger revenue of Pakistan Railways. Whereas, bidirectional relation is found between Inflation and passenger revenue of Pakistan Railways. It indicates that Pakistan Railways can play a better role to increase the economic productivity of the country by adopting competitive passenger tariff and a consolidated transportation policy. That is equally beneficial for profitability thus sustainability of Pakistan Railways and the environment.