A fresh shot in the Karnaphuli Tunnel's arm!

The 3.32 km Karnaphuli Tunnel, South Asia's first underwater river tunnel connecting the port city of Chattogram with Anwara upazila, aimed at increasing connectivity and boost trade, has turned out to be a white elephant. The reason is that the forecasts about the project's earning from the toll to be collected from the vehicles passing through the tunnel have proved wrong. According to recent reports, at present close to 3,900 vehicles pass through the tunnel every day, whereas the expectation was that the number would be around 28,300 vehicles per day. In other words, the actual number of vehicles at present passing through the tunnel every day is less than 14 per cent of what was initially projected. One wonders, what drove the government of the time to have conceived of such an expensive project worth about US$1.0 billion? Consider that the project was designed following the 'one city two towns' model similar to Shanghai of China and thus turn Chattogram into a major logistic hub of the country.
Now that the traffic movement is far lower than what was expected, the authorities have made matters worse by charging tolls on the vehicles at a prohibitive rate. In consequence, commercial vehicles are avoiding the tunnel and taking cheaper, alternative route to reach their destinations. Against this backdrop, the Road Transport and Highways Division (RTHD) is learnt to have proposed another project worth Tk4.63 billion that would build a 10.30-metre-wide road linking the Anwara end of the tunnel with Gachhbari in Chandanaish on the Chattogram-Cox's Bazar highway. Planned to be completed in the next three years, the 21.1 km link road is expected to ramp up traffic flow through the Karnaphuli Tunnel. The Planning Division has reportedly placed the project proposal on the agenda of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) meeting for its approval. As conceived in the proposed project, it would provide a safer connectivity between the Karnaphuli Tunnel and the Chattogram-Cox's Bazar National Highway. Using this new route, travellers, it is believed, would be able to cut travel distance by 17 km and save half an hour of their travel time.
Now these are but the projected benefits that would be possible to draw from the proposed link road project. The question is, the original Tunnel project, too, was built driven by the idea that it would set up an all-weather road link between the east and west banks of the Karnaphuli river and thereby create a continuous connection in the Dhaka-Chattogram-Cox's Bazar Highway network reducing the pressure of road traffic in the Chattogram city. It was also envisioned that the Karnaphuli Tunnel would function as a catalyst for industrialisation of the underdeveloped east bank of the river by way of attracting local and foreign investment to the planned economic zones such as the envisaged Chinese Economic Zone in Anwara. It was also anticipated that, annually, the Tunnel project would add 0.166 per cent to the country's GDP for several decades. It was further expected that the Tunnel would facilitate efficient movement of goods and services directly connecting the Chattogram Port, the under-construction Matarbari Deep Sea Port and Mirsarai Economic Zone. But things did not turn out the expected way. Similarly, the present authorities are expecting that link road project would provide faster access to major industrial hubs including Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Limited (CUFL), Karnaphuli Fertilizer Company Limited (KAFCO), the Korean EPZ, the Chinese Special Economic Zone as well as the Parki Sea Beach and the Marine Academy.
The basic problem with Karnaphuli Tunnel was a lack of proper feasibility study of the project. Now the expectation is that the planners of the proposed road link project have done the homework to avoid a repeat of the tunnel's underperformance.