BRTA's trouble-shooting, albeit ethereal

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Shamsul Huq Zahid
The laziness that had gripped the Dhaka city during Eid holidays is disappearing fast. The usual hustle and bustle is almost back with the return of the Eid holidaymakers from their village homes. And by early next week the capital city is expected to return to its nightmarish traffic gridlock during peak hours.
The residents of Dhaka these days talk more about traffic problem than weather as the former eats up their valuable time and causes serious physical and economic discomfort.
What has been more annoying is that the agencies have always talked a lot about the traffic problem but have done nothing tangible to improve the situation. In the meanwhile, the population has swelled and more and more vehicles, mainly motorised, have crowded the streets, making the problem almost unmanageable.
The problem has turned so serious that the chief of the caretaker administration at a function held on August 28 last made a strong plea for finding a solution to the city's traffic problem.
In response to that appeal, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) has, reportedly, submitted a proposal before the communication ministry to introduce the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) using articulated buses and remove the old cars and passenger buses from the city streets.
Most Dhakaites though are not familiar with BRT or articulated buses, have on a number of occasions in the past heard the government leaders and officials talking about the need for removing old cars and passenger buses from the streets to give the chocking city some respite. But their words have never been translated into deeds. Still dilapidated buses, which are not allowed to operate in any modern city, are occupying the Dhaka streets. There is no guarantee that these buses would go off the streets easily even if the government decides so. The owners of these vehicles are either highly influential people or know the art of disenabling an official decision. It could be interesting to watch how the authorities concerned implement the decision, if the government finally decides to remove buses having an operating life of 20 years or more.
As far as introduction of BRT or articulated bus service is concerned, the BRTA, according to a newspaper report, has proposed introduction of 200 articulated buses, at least, on four routes of Dhaka city. A transport expert who worked in the ESCAP for many years has also vetted the BRTA idea. But how far is the BRTA proposal practicable in case of Dhaka city where the traffic system has developed highly unscientifically?
The BRT is a broad term given to a variety of transport systems that, through the improvements to infrastructure, vehicles and scheduling, attempt to use buses to provide a service that is of higher quality than an ordinary bus line. The main feature of a BRT system is having dedicated bus lanes which operate separate from all other traffic modes. Usually, articulated buses, which are approximately 18m (60ft) long compared to 11 to 14m (35 to 45ft) long regular buses, are pressed into service under the BRT system.
But can the authorities earmark separate lanes on even the wide streets of Dhaka for use by the articulated buses? If a BRT service is allowed to operate in mixed traffic like the regular buses, it would be subjected to same congestion and delays. If separate lanes are earmarked for articulated buses, and other vehicles are pushed to share the remaining part of the roads, the situation might even turn worse.
The capital city of neighbouring India, New Delhi, introduced BRT in April this year. The city is already having a disastrous effect. The three-mixed traffic lanes were reduced to 2:1 mixed traffic and BRT lanes, leading to huge traffic pileups. To ease the situation, traffic on the mixed lanes is being diverted to secondary road network. However, the BRT has been in operation in a large number of cities in Asia, Europe, North and South Americas where road networks are well-knit and wide and traffic systems highly efficient.
The residents of Dhaka city though are witness to a fast deteriorating traffic situation should consider them lucky since the authorities have made them familiar with, of course ethereally, all the high-sounding and highly expensive projects such as subway, monorail, elevated expressway! The BRT and articulated buses are just new additions.
The government might think of any other project to improve the traffic situation, but not BRT or articulated buses, which would require segregation from other vehicles on the roads, keeping the existing traffic signaling and traffic management systems in place. Can anyone say how many lanes are there in any major street of Dhaka city? Actually, it is the drivers of motor vehicles who determine how many lanes they would form. The vehicle that would go left are seen plying on the extreme right side of the road and at the intersection it goes left blocking other vehicles that would go straight. In such cases or violation of other traffic rules, the traffic policemen have proved themselves to be the symbols of extreme tolerance! Only when vehicles do involve in accidents, they rush to the spots and in other cases they try to be nonchalant.
The government as a short-term measure should force the old and dilapidated buses out of the roads, enforce traffic rules rigorously through a well-disciplined traffic police and put a cap on the growth of private vehicles. In the long-term, it is left with no alternative but to build a network of flyovers and introduce subway in Dhaka city, no matter how expensive those are.
Most importantly, the solution to most problems of Dhaka city lies in discouraging people from coming to Dhaka from every place of the country. That can be only ensured through the decentralisation of power and delegation of authority to local governments and to the administrative tiers at the district and division levels and transforming the upazilas into primary growth centres of the economy.
Zahidfe@yahoo.com