Millions of Dhakaites now appear destined to live with nightmarish traffic gridlock. Such jams, which eat up almost half of precious man-hours in day-time, will only increase, not decrease, as long as decentralisation of ministries, offices and other establishments from Dhaka to other divisional/district towns does not take place.
Absence of any planning either by the Traffic Police Department or by any other concerned authority has only added to severity of the problem. Today none knows at what time an office-goer from Mohammadpur or Mirpur will reach his office at Motijheel, let alone Narayanganj or any other suburb of the capital city. A student, living in Azimpur, is uncertain as to when he can attend his classes in a university located in Uttara. Such miseries can fuel people's anger. After all, patience has its limit.
The Traffic Police Department can, at least, reduce the agonising psychological sufferings of stranded passengers of bus or other vehicles if it could undertake some innovative steps like allowing vehicles to move as per electronically-managed traffic signals. It can adopt what Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in her first term had innovated to ease mental agonies of Dhakaites who were then facing frequent electricity load-shedding in the capital. None knew when power was to go off and nobody could know when it would resume. Every household then prayed to the Almighty for continuation of electricity supply particularly at night.
As reports had it, Hasina had summoned officials of the Power Development Board (PDB) and asked them to go for one-hour long load-shedding twice a day by informing the public. At least the exasperated power consumers could feel themselves relieved at the chance of electricity resuming after one hour. Consumers were feeling happy as they were counting time on their watches. Such an idea worked well to soothe the agonised minds of Dhakaites. After all, sufferings are linked to psychology.
The same could be applied to Dhaka's horrible traffic. Although the Prime Minister has, time and again, vowed to build Digital Bangladesh, the traffic system in the capital is yet to go digital. Most of the electronic traffic signals are simply ignored by the traffic personnel. Traffic sergeants are often seen diverting traffic manually by waving hands. After all, they are human beings having natural errors. Once they allow, by waving hands, cars and other vehicles to move on, they may simply forget that another connecting road is by this time jam-packed with heavy traffic in wait for hours. Passengers then are often seen hurling abuses at the functionaries of the government.
The other day, this writer saw perfect operation of traffic signals at busy Gulshan number One and Gulshan number Two. There all vehicles ground to a halt automatically at the signal showing 'red' sign. And they proceed when the 'green' signal is flashed. Only one or two police personnel are seen there. Similar is the smooth operation of traffic signals at Shymoli, Kawran Bazar and other busy roads except the Topkhana-Shahbagh road via Engineers' Institute. Traffic signals are religiously followed in even populated cities like Kolkata with one or two police personnel standing nearby only to detect any violation which is almost nil.
Allowing the electronic traffic signals to function will help move the vehicles, albeit, at a slower pace. But at least this can give psychological relief to the tired passengers as the Prime Minister did in case of load shedding-wary power consumers.
arjayster@gmail.com
