Per day trip generation in greater Dhaka area has increased to around 30 million, up by over 42 per cent in the last five years due to increase of households in different areas and improvement of economic condition, a latest study said.
It also said per household trip in the city is still dominated by short one, thanks to lack of efficient public transport facilities.
According to the household interview study (HIS) conducted as part of the revised strategic transport plan (RSTP) with the support of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), walking and paddle-operating rickshaws are still a popular mode for daily short trips.
Traffic experts and analysts said trend of increasing short trips has continued because of people's choice to live near their working areas and educational institutions. These have been attributed to the failure of the government and private operators to provide comfortable and efficient public transport services.
Though the government has taken measures to introduce mass transit system to manage millions of trips in different areas for easing traffic congestion, it is yet to start functioning in any of the city's corridors, they added.
Trip generation is counted to forecast travel demand within an area following its distribution, mode choice and route selection.
At present, thousands of buses and mini buses occupy the city on more than 209 routes but those are not up to the mark to encourage people to use buses and public transports and discourage them to use cars for their daily trips. The RSTP study also predicted increase of per day trip generation to 55.5 million in 2035 and demand of bus and public transports is to increase to 80 per cent by then.
The demand of public transport as per the RSTP must have been 70 per cent in 2014 to meet the trip demand.
Another JICA-funded study done in 2010 also showed that rickshaws dominated around 20.8 million trips which were found generated in the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) and Dhaka Metropolitan areas.
The study titled 'Dhaka Urban Transport Network Development Study' (DHUTS) found, of the total trips, 19.6 million were produced within the DCC.
Sixty per cent of the total trips were composed of non-motorised transports (NMTs) such as walking, riding bicycles and rickshaws.
The NMT trip was 11.2 million (57 per cent) in the DCC areas and 684,481 (55 per cent) outside.
According to the RSTP study, almost 5.0 million trips are made by rickshaws whose average length of travel is 3.6 kilometres.
Household income groups having earnings below Tk 20,000 mostly prefer to walk daily than use other modes of vehicles.
However, rickshaws dominated as the most accepted mode of transport by all income groups. These groups are divided into seven earning groups -- below Tk 10,000 to above Tk 60,000.
Use of bus, CNG and cars including taxi remains almost the same in all household earning groups.
All these trips are made for going to work, schools, back from work and schools, from homes to other places including shopping, business and from other places to homes.
The analysis said all these highlight the need for a mass transport system as these small vehicles could not meet the huge demand of the Dhaka city.
"Household trip production rate increases every year but services for these trips are not increasing in accordance with the need," said BUET Professor Md Shamsul Hoque.
Though the government adopted the STP in 2010, it, however, allowed deviation from important recommendations of the 20-year transportation policy for the Dhaka city during the last five years.
Due to changes and lack of coordination among agencies involved with different transport-related activities, the city's scope of public transports has been limited.
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