New Hatirjheel road to be ready by next nine months

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Munima Sultana The city's traffic gridlock is unlikely to improve to any marked extent even after inclusion of the 9.8 kilometre road in Hatirjheel and Begunbari areas, scheduled to be completed within next nine months, officials and experts said. They said the road, being constructed around 300-acres Hatirjheel-Begunbari water body, was not planned to reduce traffic congestion. It was rather taken up for construction, to protect the lake from encroachment, increase the city's rainwater retention capacity, and provide a pollution-free environment to the people, they added. "The road in the project area is not a solution to the city's nagging traffic jam," said Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) Professor Shamsul Haque, one of the project's consultants. "But there are efforts to improve traffic movement in the area," he added. The experts later revised the design of the road to facilitate commuters to enjoy the facility of some easy connection between eastern and western parts of the city, along with uninterrupted movement from one entry point to another. The Begunbari-Hatirjheel Integrated Development Project, initiated in 2007, will now have four additional bridges, two viaducts and four underpasses with the road. The people of Moghbazar, Modhubagh, Ulon, Mohanagar, Daspara, Rampura, Merul Badda, Gulshan, Tejgaon and Begunbari can use the road to go to different locations. Dr Mohammad Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the BUET consultancy team, said two types of road services have been designed in the project area to avoid traffic jam to some extent. The service road will be used by all kinds of vehicles to move on both ways. But the expressway will be exclusively used by motorised vehicles, giving no scope to stop anywhere, except at the entry and exit points. "The two-lane expressway will be a one-way track, where transports will go clockwise, and can move to other direction through the bridges, overpasses or viaducts," he added. Due to addition of public facilities, including U-loops, the project cost has increased to Tk 19.71 billion, which the Executive Committee of National Economic Council (ECNEC) has recently approved. They said 60 per cent of the project works have already been completed, and the entire road will be opened for traffic movement by next July. However, the Hatirjheel part of the road will be opened December this year, on an experimental basis. Apart from the road facility, the project will have motorbus terminals at north and south points, five bus-stands to pick and drop passengers on the service road, walkways, three floating walkways, five foot-over bridges and two parkings.