The parties concerned have reached an agreement over establishment of a multimodal transport hub at the airport station of Bangladesh Railway (BR) burying more than five years of stalemate over the site selection.
Transport experts have favoured the site in consideration of the convenience of domestic passengers, instead of the airport passengers who were earlier set to have alternative options to reach the Multimodal Transport Hub (MTH) from the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA).
The Asian Development Bank has already started conducting the feasibility study on the MTH thanks to the agreement reached about the site, sources said.
Initially, the government had proposed construction of the hub at the airport station of BR to the convenience of all sections of commuters in getting transports of their choice under one roof. The proposal contained a provision to connect the airport with an underpass conveyor belt.
But later the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) proposed establishment of it near the Terminal 3 to be built under the HSIA's expansion project being planned.
The JICA plan focused more on airport passengers as there is no dedicated transport service at the HSIA.
The JICA also recommended incorporating a ramp of Dhaka Elevated Expressway (DEE) with the hub so that the passengers to and from the airport could be transported smoothly.
But now after a recent meeting, sources said, the authorities have selected the airport station of the BR for the hub so that all the passengers enjoying metro rail (mass rapid transit), BRT (bus rapid transit), BR, DEE and taxi services have access to it easily.
The JICA has now recommended establishment of MRT and BRT stations near the terminal 3, which will also host a ramp of the DEE.
A study by JICA on the airport expansion shows that hardly any air passenger uses the airport railway station, the second busiest of the BR after that at Kamalapur. Nearly 45,000 people use the airport station every day to and from the city.
Earlier, there was a disagreement about selecting the implementing authority of the MTH project, officials said. But the experts in a meeting in June last finally agreed to hand over the project to the BR.
The Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority (DTCA) proposed establishment of the MTH on 1.5 acres of land of the airport railway station under a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) initiative in 2011.
Since then, the proposal had remained caught up in a cobweb of obstacles due to non-cooperation by different agencies, including the BR.
The project has not been included yet in the list of PPP projects prepared by the PPP Authority.
smunima@yahoo.com
BR’s airport station to host multimodal transport hub
Munima Sultana | Published: October 28, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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