Developing railways

Donor organisations have been providing financial and technical support to improve road infrastructure in Bangladesh. With their support, the road infrastructure nationwide has expanded and improved significantly.
However, experience from the USA and Thailand demonstrates that road infrastructure is not only costly to build but also very costly to maintain. In fact, road infrastructure creates an inefficient and unsustainable transportation system because of its high consumption of resources such as materials, land and energy and because in the long run, it increases the use of motorised vehicles which eventually results in traffic congestion.
Currently, many of our national highways are in a poor condition due to lack of maintenance.
The roads are not properly maintained as probably the country does not have the necessary funds to maintain the roadways.
To truly help enjoy a sustainable growth and development, donor organisations can provide support to improve our rail infrastructure as railway transport is a much more sustainable and efficient mode of transportation than road transport. It uses less resources and can carry more people using less space and energy compared to road transport.
Due to lack of funds, compared to our road infrastructure, the rail infrastructure has not improved much for quite a long time.
Ridwan Quaium
Dhaka
 ridwanq@gmail.com