Nagging traffic jam holds down city-dwellers even on weekend

FE Team | Published: September 16, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

Nagging traffic jams in the capital's thoroughfare Saturday held down the city-dwellers even on the weekend holiday and caused intolerable suffering even to the ones who are used to it as a daily phenomenon, reports UNB.
Homebound people, fasting for a second day of Ramadan, and those who have emergencies, suffered most by the traffic congestion, as they had to waste hours in the vehicles. Some of the pious people missed their prayer sessions.
Officials and witnesses said the sufferings of commuters in this mega-city with ill-planned communications network got further compounded as road repairs by Dhaka City Corporation had been disrupted by heavy rain for the last few days.
The roads from Farmgate to Shahbagh and from Mohakhali to Maghbazar were found clogged with thousands of vehicles at a standstill.
The scenario was almost all the same everywhere across the overcrowded city with too inadequate streets and roadways.
From the foot over-bridges at Farmgate and Shahbagh, traffic was seen moving inch by inch on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue during the peak hours. Roads around Gabtoli, Mohakhali and Sayedabad inter-city bus terminals, major intersections at Jatrabari, Bijoy Sarani, Sonargaon Hotel, Bangla Motor and Hotel Sheraton, a long stretch of Mirpur Road from Lalmatia to New Market and most roads in Dhanmondi elite locality-- all were found choked up with vehicles.
About the traffic jams on a weekend holiday, Deputy Commissioner (DC) for traffic (West) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Shoyeb Ahmed said though today is a holiday, most non-government organisations operated their business houses. "That's why most of the streets in the city were blocked with vehicles, posing traffic jam," he told the news agency.
DC of the DMP also said that from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm the traffic jams turned for the worse as most of the city-dwellers came out of their houses with cars for shopping on the occasion of Ramadan.
Traffic cops further forecast that the traffic jams might be seen in a dreadful form on the city streets from tomorrow (Sunday), as all offices, including government offices, will open amid the Ramadan rush.
Some experts cited a lack of east-west road link as one of the causes of the chronic traffic problem in the city while missing lanes and by-lanes as another.
A bypass through the eastern fringe of the capital could dilute the heavy load of traffic greatly, instead of taking up heavily time-consuming transport schemes, they said.