It is important in the development paradigm for a country having financial constraints to set priorities right. Bangladesh has been on the cusp of status change from being one of the world's poor-country clubs, LDCs. Faster economic growth with development projects having the potential of job generation is deemed its natural course. Building up the right infrastructures is imperative to provide the backbone for this uplift. Communications infrastructures naturally come first in physical development, but the moot question remains whether the first thing is being set first.
Let's take transport-system development in the capital. Mass transport has been absent here in the true sense of the term. Megacity Dhaka's commuting has come to such a pass where an urgent remedy is deemed imperative to clear traffic impasse and multifarious fatal pollutions.
Megaprojects like metro rail and elevated expressways hold the prospect of providing modern-day transport for people living in the capital city and districts around, but the outcome takes time. Besides, a modern commuter system is necessary for the city interior to remove 'chaos'.
A masterstroke is already conceived but stalled, which may dilute the traffic tailbacks and life-sapping pollutions: air pollution, noise pollution with toxic exhausts from outmoded buses and deafening honking horns from all motor vehicles.
Executing the stalled route-franchise project and enforcement of the new transport law can heal all these ills overnight like a panacea.
Noise pollution on such a scale is so insidious that it may lead to 'mass deafness' and diseases that cause death, experts say. A specialist at a World Heart Day talk- show recently highlighted the danger of noise pollution that it leads to high blood pressure and the latter leads to heart attack--and cardiac arrest--among other health hazards.
A UNDP report found the average noise level in Dhaka to be 119 decibels, the highest in the world, in 2021, while, according to the 1999 WHO guidelines for community noise level, the recommended limits are 55dB for residential areas and 70dB for traffic and commercial areas.
Enforcement of the pre-amended new Transport Act and implementation of the stalled bus route franchise in Dhaka can cure all these ills, provide city-dwellers with the invaluable comfort of smart living and cut commuters' transport costs by some 80 per cent.
So, it's urgent to hold the deafeningly honking vehicles by the horns in Dhaka in a special drive to save life. To rub salt into the wounds comes another syndrome of traffic debacles. Most rickshaws and vans become autos at sundown. Combined with umpteen ride-sharing bikes, they make roads unsafe.
A girl student's death in a battery-driven rickshaw accident in Dhaka leads to an uncanny finding that most manually driven rickshaws and vans become autos at sundown on the city's streets. And combined with umpteen ride-sharing motorbikes, they together make the roads in the capital city unsafe for pedestrians and commuters too.
Innumerable accidents are taking place involving these three modes of vehicles driven recklessly for some quick bucks. The left foot of a person was fractured being knocked from behind by a fast-running battery rickshaw at night on a road on a closed holiday some years back, and a few days back the back of his right-hand palm was injured by a frenetically running motorbike while crossing the road in the same area. He was violently knocked on his right leg during the crossing of a road not far off the previous spots in the afternoon.
All this happens to be just the tip of the iceberg. Autorun of both the three-wheelers and commercial passenger transportation by bikes are ''unauthorized'', officials say. ''City-dwellers' safety should come first,'' says many an analyst of the situation.
Transport experts think implementing the long-stalled route-franchise project in the capital city, Dhaka, can instantly resolve umpteen problems some 20 million residents are plagued by and the national life and economy at large are set back.
Huge economic loss in terms of lost time to traffic impasse, noise pollution with the potential risk of mass deafness, and air pollution with the associated stigma of 'the worst liveable city can taper out in no time.
Those in authority too are in the know of this sure shot--plying franchisee company buses on all routes, with one company of more than one transport owner on each route--but backtracks 'under the influence of unseen powers that be', say analysts, transport experts and passenger-welfare campaigners. They all feel that it's urgent to cut the Gordian knot like it was done by Alexander the Great.
Currently, all modes of transport are expensive too. Route franchise would bring new, big buses including double-deckers that will operate in close frequencies. The necessity of private cars, scooters and other smaller vehicles will naturally be thinning out. That may also prove a quantum leap in Bangladesh's development strides, as the planned mass-transport system would dilute the traffic impasse in the megacity, save lost work hours and quantum of GDP and improve the air quality substantially. Ramshackle vehicles, mainly buses, spew black smoke into the air as well as cause severe noise pollution with old engine sounds and roaring hydraulic/air horns, experts say.
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