Last week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the country's first six-lane flyover at Mohipal in Feni. The flyover, constructed on Dhaka-Chittagong Highway, is expected to ease traffic jam on this route considered the life-line of the country's export-import trade. But despite all these measures smooth communication on this highway is yet to be ensured.
Long tailbacks, road crashes, frequent movement of improvised motorised three-wheelers like rickshaws and vans, and presence of street-vendors pose a serious threat to smooth communication on this 257-km long stretch that was elevated to four-lane highway two years ago. The highway often experiences fatal accidents due to reckless driving and plying of motorised rickshaws and vans. Low-speed vehicles are ubiquitous on this highway in defiance of a ban. The movement of such slow-speed vehicles causes problem to the fast-running heavy ones leading to accidents.
According to the police, 38 spots on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway are accident-prone. Reckless driving and unfit vehicles are mainly responsible for road-accidents. Following such accidents, lack of efficiency in removing the damaged vehicles or wreckage from the road is yet another cause for huge tailbacks. The highway police authorities often attribute this failure to lack of sufficient manpower responsible for proper surveillance on this highway.
So some immediate steps are needed to improve the traffic situation on this highway. These include enforcing ban on slow-speed vehicles on this highway, construction of separate lane on this highway for the slow-speed vehicles as it has been done on Hatikamrul-Banpara highway in Sirajganj, providing concerned agencies with proper manpower and logistics for removal of damaged vehicles, ensuring strict and proper surveillances by highway patrol police to stop reckless driving.
Another problem is the insufficient width of the three major bridges on this highway-the Meghna bridge, the Gumti bridge and the bridge on the Shitalakhya river. Due to their narrowness traffic congestion on the approach roads to these bridges has become a regular phenomenon. Moreover, sometimes parts of these bridges remain off-limit to traffic due to maintenance works, causing long tailbacks.
Though the government has initiated projects to construct three four-lane bridges on this highway, the slow implementation of these projects raises concern. When the TK 65 billion deal for construction of these three bridges was signed in November 2015, Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader said that the project would be completed by 2018. But it is learnt that the project would fail to meet the deadline.
Ensuring smooth traffic on this highway, the busiest in the country with daily traffic of around 30,000 is crucial to the economy as around 95 per cent of the imported and exported goods are transported on this highway.
Unless and until a comprehensive and sustainable measure can be taken to ensure quick and safe traffic movements on this all-important highway, it would remain an Achilles' heel to the country's export-import trade.
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