TransPeshawar has formally announced a new Bus Rapid Transit route, DR-17, on Peshawar’s Ring Road, with regular service due to begin on Monday, 16 November.
According to TransPeshawar, the new route will run from Chamkani via the southern Ring Road to the Mall of Hayatabad, providing a direct travel facility between the two ends of the city. The route will have 27 stops, and 15 modern buses will operate on it in the initial phase.
Under the announced timings, the first bus will leave Chamkani at 7:00am, while service from the Mall of Hayatabad will begin at 8:20am. The service will run daily until 7:00pm without interruption.
TransPeshawar said that with the addition of DR-17, the total number of Zu Peshawar routes will rise to 20, reflecting the continued expansion of the system. Officials said the new route will particularly benefit residents living along the Ring Road, students travelling to educational institutions, and people who commute to work every day, saving them considerable travel time.
The announcement follows years of planning for bus services on the Ring Road. In July 2024, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government decided to declare the Ring Road from Chamkani to Hayatabad a BRT route, and to extend the BRT service from Chamkani to Pabbi in Nowshera. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Urban Mobility Authority chaired by the then chief minister.
In February 2025, the provincial government approved a wider expansion of the BRT service to new areas of Peshawar, including Ring Road, Bara Road and Khyber Road, with 72 new diesel-hybrid buses to be added to the fleet. Officials set a six-month deadline for the purchase of the buses and the completion of civil works for the new routes, and said the missing link of the Ring Road would be completed with full funding. Seven underpasses were also planned on Ring Road and University Road to improve traffic flow.
The Peshawar BRT system, operated by TransPeshawar, was inaugurated in August 2020. Its main east-west corridor runs from Chamkani to Karkhano market with 30 stations, supported by a network of feeder routes that carry buses onto city streets. The system carries hundreds of thousands of passengers every day, and its expansion to the Ring Road has been a longstanding demand of commuters in the provincial capital.