Dhaka city sees daily commuter trips boom over 38 million amid people's mobility increase by 38 per cent in nine years largely as dislike for outmoded buses spawns personalized rides on smaller, non-motorised transports, a survey shows.
The latest household survey discloses a drastic drop in shares of buses from the bloated total trips during the period, as experts blame the unwelcome transition in public-transport system in the crammed megacity on government authorities keeping a route-franchise project for the run of modern buses on the backburner for years.
Transport experts and data analysts attribute the 9.29-percent decrease in share of buses in the total 38.1-million trips from 21 per cent to continuous increase in shares of non motorised transports (NMTs).
The road-clogging boom of NMTs like walking, rickshaw, bicycle, personalized mode of transport of motorcycle and the like shows unpopularity of the most-demanding public transport of buses in the metropolis, they add.
The bus share was 21.1 per cent in 2014 in a fall from 28.5 per cent in 2009. The data were collected through household interviews under the Revised Strategic Transport Plan (RSTP) and Dhaka Urban Transport Network Development Study (DHUTS) respectively.
The data on trip generation were collected from Household Interview Survey for Updating the RSTP (URSTP) by Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority (DTCA). The DTCA took the initiative in May 2022 as scope of implementing many recommendations in Strategic Transport Plan (STP) and RSTP has been limited or damaged due to uncontrolled and unplanned land use of the capital city and its surroundings.
The findings show that trip generates in Dhaka, Narsingdi, Narayanganj and Gazipur increased to 38.1 million in 2023 from 27.7 million in 2014. The URSTP predicts the trips to go up to 48 million by 2045.
"Some 66 per cent of the total trip generation is centered in and around the capital city though only 2.3-percent land is used for main road and rail corridors," the URSTP says in its interim report-2 analysis secondary data on land use.
Official sources say the primary data for the URSTP were collected in October 2023 and compared with the data of RSTP in 2014 and DHUTS in 2009 to find the changes in the city's transportation scenarios as many recommendations in the STP, DHUTS and RSTP were not executed, and breached.
Regarding NMTs and public transports, they said no pragmatic measures were taken in improving walking facility, withdrawing paddle-driven rickshaws and discouraging personal-car or bike-driven trips, resulting in NMT boom.
Though STP done in 2005 suggested five NMT-free routes in the city, the experts said, rather rickshaws have been made "freestyle" alongside allowing innumerable battery-operated three-wheelers.
Similarly, they also allege, recommendations on buses, including bus-route transit, rationalization and bus-route franchise made in the STP, DHUTS and RSTP were not executed.
The URSTP found share of motorcycle having increased to 9.5 per cent from 3.4 per cent in 2014 in Dhaka Metropolitan Area while its increase was 10.9 per cent from 1.8 per cent in Dhaka and its surrounding urban settings.
The experts also list other causes like incentives for motorcycle manufacturing and import. Share of three-wheelers increased to 11.5 per cent from 5.1 per cent, the data also showed.
The share of public transports for the entire study areas - Dhaka, Gazipur, Narayanganj and Narsingdi-- decreased to 8.9 per cent from 22.8 per cent.
Project director on URSTP Mohammad Rabiul Alam says, "If the trend continuous with no significant focus on NMTs, share of rickshaws would increase to 30 per cent with 28 per cent of NMTs by 2045."
The data analysis in the Update RSTP will find scope of such recommendations like metro rails when other related policy implementation was not focused.
The statistics were collected from 52,000 households and interviewing 250,000 people in October 2023 under the URSTP project supported by the Asian Development Bank.
"The final draft report will soon be placed for approval," says the PD.
About the findings transport expert Prof Mohammad Shamsul Hoque says the city-transport problems continued to be intense for focusing on project- driven activities rather than on related policies on NMTs in short-, middle- and long-term context with low cost involvement.
He notes the per-kilometer per-hour speed dropped continuously over the years which proves the dropping of the city's "heartbeats like dying patients at ICU" for doing nothing on public transports.
"Trying to boost up activities like metro-rail projects as solution without lifesaving medicines to increase heartbeat of the city," the engineering professor of Civil Engineering Department of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology told the FE over the phone in metaphorical terms.
He says for ignoring the importance of improving pedestrian movement, BRT, bus-route franchise, the city-traffic condition continued to worsen.
The URSTP data also show that walking in the total trip generation increased by 36 per cent in 2023 from 31.09 per cent in 2014 and 19.09 per cent in 2009. Some 14.33 million trips are generated in walking which was 11.68 million in 2014.
But the share of rickshaws in the trips was 38.7 per cent in 2009 which dropped to 22 per cent in 2014 but again rebounded to 30 per cent in 2023.
Meanwhile, analysts say, city-dwellers face adversities stemming the boom of smaller vehicles and also run of worn-out buses, like air and noise pollution, the defiling of neighbourhoods for open peeing on roadsides by umpteen helpless drivers of such vehicles as there are hardly any corner-side urinals.
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