Thanks are due to political parties for arranging rallies, procession and meetings on weekly holidays. Although not all private offices remain closed on Saturday, the usual rush hours are supposed to be more tolerable on that day than on the weekly days. Yet there is no reason to think that the weekly holidays are only for relaxation and entertainment for all the inhabitants of this mega city overburdened with a 20 million population. No wonder, a leading architect and city planner has expressed his serious concern about the pressure of urbanisation on the city with more people getting concentrated here comprising just one per cent of the country's total area.
That as high as 32 per cent of the entire urban population lives here in the absence of decentralisation is also leaving serious adverse impact on public health. This fact is corroborated by a Reuter report based on a research study conducted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIUC). The report says that people in Bangladesh stand to lose 6.8 years of their life span due to heavy pollution. How many years the inhabitants of the capital with the severest pollution are to lose when this figure accounts for the entire country?
Quite evidently, the more the time people spend in traffic jam the greater the risk of suffering the ill effects of pollution. Working people are, moreover, exposed to heavy pollution on their way to office/factory and back home. When tailbacks on the roads of Dhaka are getting longer and prolonged, the metro rail and the elevated expressway ---a segment of each of which have been opened now --- have made a difference in the mode of commuting here. With the opening of the entire routes of these mega projects, commuting in the capital will certainly have a paradigm shift.
Now the metro rail ends halfway at Agargaon and the expressway at Farmgate from their starting point at Diabari and Dhaka airport respectively. Before the entire segments of these two facilities are open to the public, it is of utmost importance to keep their release points free from hindrance. That double-decker buses wait for passengers at Uttara North station of the metro rail deserves appreciation. But there is no such arrangement at Agargaon station – a far busier one than Uttara north. On Saturday last, in particular, the release point at Agargoan witnessed a nightmarish scene because of the closure of the connecting roads at that point. An assembly of civilians arranged on the occasion of the inauguration of the expressway at the old venue of international trade fair drew thousands of people mostly followers of the Awami League. This was the reason why the buses hired for their transportation were parked on nearly the entire stretch of the road from Agargaon to Shishu Mela.
Together with the processions brought out by different thana units of the AL and the vehicles simply choked the road. It was even difficult to walk from one end to the other, let alone availing of any mode of transport. What was unwise is that the buses were left helter-skelter on the road without the least care for inconvenience of the public. Let it be noted that the road leads to a number of hospitals including the Dhaka Shishu Hospital, National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation. One holds the beacon for children in critical conditions, particularly when dengue is claiming more children than ever and the other is the last resort for patients of accidents requiring emergency medical intervention.
What was noticeable is that if the buses were parked in an orderly manner, enough space alongside the median strip could be left vacant for vehicles to pass by. But who cares? People must not be subjected to such avoidable lengthy delays and consequent sufferings. It smacked at best of indifference to and at worst could-not-care-less attitude towards public travail on the part of the leaders of the multitudes who arrived there. Now this is an indication how things can go awry in the rush hours when the entire route of the metro rail is opened. Supposing a number of trains coming from Uttara and Motijheel cough up their passengers within 20 minutes, those looking for connecting vehicles will find it hard to catch one once out of the station.
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