The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) has taken a move for the first time to conduct road safety audit on its already developed two national highways under its road safety project aiming to avert road accidents.
Officials said as a pilot initiative, road safety audit on the 70 kilometre Tongi -Elenga highway will be carried out to review the busy artery's built up right of the way from the road safety context.
They said apart from the four-lane highway, another 70 kilometre two-lane Natore-Rajshahi-Godagari highway will also be reviewed from the safety lense to address the issues of safe vehicles and pedestrian movement.
"Road safety audit is necessary before and after a road construction which is now being tried to address after so many years," said one of them.
According to RHD's Road Safety Project, pilot comprehensive road safety measures would be reviewed to improve engineering designs, signing and marking, pedestrian facilities, speed enforcement, and emergency care.
These measures will help reduce road traffic deaths by more than 30 percent on these two highways.
The pilot road safety audit on the 140 km highways is the part of the project's target of covering total 640 km highway.
Road safety audit will suggest elements like pedestrian refuge fence, overhead crossing sign with lights, vulnerable road users facilities, raised coloured crossing, yield zone surface treatment in the highway's specific points and locations.
RHD Chief Engineer Syed Moinul Hasan said the audit is expected to complete within a month or two and work in connection with the suggested elements would then begin.
The overarching goal of the initiative is to strengthen road safety management as the government has the target to reduce road fatalities and injuries to 50 per cent by the end of the decade.
The unsafe road is the country's a serious concern due to experiencing average 4,000 deaths for unsafe driving, unsafe behaviors of road users, faulty engineering etc.
Though the RHD has over 22,000 km highways and regional highways, almost all the arteries were constructed with zero focus on road safety context. The first expressway built from Dhaka to Bhanga through Mawa has also experienced fatal accidents including bus accidents despite spending highest per kilometre budget due to not addressing the road safety issues.
The Accident Research Institute under the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology identified several road safety deficiencies including lack of continuous guardrails, speed management systems, adequate pavement signs.
The pilot Tongi-Elenga highway has also been built spending billions of taka with the concept of uninterrupted movement of transport by providing facilities like service road, local connectivity etc.
But sources said due to the highway's link with the country's second largest bridge over river Jamuna with high volume of traffic, adequate safety issues are yet to be identified in the project's design and road management.
smunima@yahoo.com
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