The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Traffic last week shared its plan with stakeholders, including Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority (DTCA), Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) and representatives from bus owners and workers.
Official sources said the DMP Traffic Division's proposed routes do not match with any of the 42 routes in nine clusters which have been recommended by rationalizing over 300 existing routes to avoid repetition and redundancy after feasibility study.
However, DMP officials have said they are still planning the routes and will finalise in consultation with others.
Talking with DMP, DTCA and BRTA, the FE writer found the DMP Traffic working on the existing routes permitted by the Regional Transport Committee which, however, unofficially declared obsolete since initiative on bus-route rationalisation (BRR) started based on the Strategic Transport Plan and afterwards Revised Strategic Transport Plan (RSTP).
The STP was prepared in 2005 and its revision was approved in 2015.
The DTCA has been working on the BRR to introduce bus route-franchise (BRF) system based on one-route one-company form. A study on the BRR was first carried out in 2012 which was updated later several times due to non-cooperation from various quarters, including pro- Awami League bus owners.
Though Mayor Annisul Hoque tried to bring discipline in the city's important public service based on the studied routes, his untimely death jeopardised the efforts and shattered the main theme of BRF.
Later, the then Sheikh Hasina government formed a special committee led by two city mayors with DTCA as member-secretary in 2017. "But the committee activities were nothing but mockery with the demand of the people for a better city public-bus service," says one insider.
Failing to form one company each of multiple owners of bus companies, the committee launched Nagar Paribahan service with mainly BRTC buses and one private company's buses keeping all illegal and unfit non-route permitted buses on three routes of green clusters.
The city bus service in the country was never operated in systemic ways owing to political influence, resulting in deployment of thousands of illegal or unfit buses and untrained drivers with their associated harms.
Redundancy of routes and scores of bus owners under a company made the street chaotic and unruly, as buses of one company compete with each other alongside other similar type innumerable companies in the streets.
During the past government's rule, leaders of Dhaka Bus Owners Association led by Khandaker Enayet Ullah used to sell the RTC- permitted routes to others as each route has allowable fixed number of buses for plying.
Sources says traffic cops were never out of the purview of allegations as they used to earn from unfit vehicles or buses running without route permits on a regular basis.
Admitting the DMP-envisaged routes different from DTCA's working BRR 42 routes, traffic joint commissioner (South) Abu Sufian said they planned the routes on consultation and participation of stakeholders.
The routes are selected based on their experiences while managing traffic at different crossings as 95-percent buses run on common routes.
"We have proposed the routes and are still working on those," he told the FE over the phone, adding that the proposed 27 regular routes and 25 circular routes are likely to increase or decrease based on the consultation with the stakeholders.
Since the Awami League government fell with the flight of its Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, in August, the DTCA has revived the committee with the two corporations' administrators and started working on the BRR routes. Road Transport and Highways Division has the announced the launch of all routes in green cluster on February 25.
Asked about the latest BRR status, DTCA Executive Director Nileema Akhter told the FE that as there was not any confusion about the routes, DTCA regularly hold meetings with stakeholders, including bus owners and financial institutions, for making the service efficient.
"We have next plan to sit with bus owners to decide how to form a formal company and how its function will be," she added.
According to the DMP study, the city has a total of 388 permitted routes allowing 18,358 buses to run. Of the total, only 110 routes are under operation with 4,546 buses.
Though the DMP's proposed routes were not found on study, it has fixed the number of buses and stoppages on average 250 and 15 respectively.
smunima@yahoo.com