Is Dhaka's traffic muddle solvable?

An orgnanisation styled, Dhaka Traffic Congestion Relief Committee (DTCRC), at a press conference in the city on Saturday last presented an 11-point proposal to the interim government aimed at resolving the capital city's tormenting traffic tangle. The suggestions put forward included among others activation of waterways by excavating the existing canals within and around the city, building short-length rail/tram ways along the rivers surrounding the city, constructing circular roads beside the rail/tram roads and so on. In short, the organisation led by its president Ishak Dulal was proposing an integrated communications system comprising roads, rail and waterways in such a way that people can travel from one end of the city to another without actually entering the city. In this way, congestion of the city by both people and transports could be significantly reduced, proponents of the novel solution viewed. Also, these circular roads would function as a bypass for inter-district public and other long-distance transports to travel to their destinations without affecting the city's internal traffic, they added.
The leaders of DTCRC placed their ideas for consideration of the interim government of Dr Yunus. Notably, it is also not for the first time that this group approached the government with their ideas. It may be recalled that around a decade and a half ago in 2010, it also approached the then-government of Sheikh Hasina.
However, there has been a surfeit of such ideas, suggestions and recommendations to address the traffic problem of this megacity, which has been growing in an unplanned manner for long. But the main barrier to the resolution of the city's myriad problems is not the lack of ideas. On the other hand, it is the lack of will of those who have been in power from time to time that lay behind the misfortunes of the city, whether it is its notorious traffic knots or destruction of the greenery, waterways and marshlands it once boasted. In fact, it is the insatiable greed for land on the part of the corrupt government people and their cronies in society that killed all the good proposals placed by various experts to improve the city's communication network. Now with the interim government in power following the student-mass upheaval, all are now pinning their hopes on this government, which carries no political legacy. The question is, how many more problems this government with its unclear terms of reference will be able to handle though it does not lack the goodwill to do so.
Even so, on September 16, chief adviser Dr Yunus at a meeting with the top officials of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and city traffic experts of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), urged them to find a way out of the chaos that the city's traffic system is beset with. He also asked the DMP officials present to select two or three important bus routes of the city where at the small bus stations, the buses would be allowed to stop for less than two minutes and if proved effective, include more city bus routes under this system on a pilot basis. He also asked the BUET's transportation experts to select at least one traffic corridor in the city where the experts and their students would try to come up with their own solutions to improve the signalling system of the selected traffic corridor. From a presentation made at that meeting by the BUET's transportation and traffic system expert, professor Dr Moazzem Hossain, it could also be learnt that every year the nation loses to the tune of Tk 400 billion only due to the city's traffic congestion. Obviously, the time lost at the city's traffic mess tells upon the economic health of the nation. In fact, these are kinds of solution by maintaining the status quo. The DTCRC's suggestions were somewhat radical in that it implied introduction of an alternative communications infrastructure including waterways, road and rail systems within and surrounding the city, though it made no suggestion about changing internal traffic infrastructure except reliving the canals and wetlands lost to the land-grabbers. No doubt the ideas are novel and to some extent revolutionary, but who is going to implement these new ideas until and unless the implementing agencies of the government are manned by new generation of officials who are dedicated, professional and free from corruption? Let us for the time being not talk about the political orientation of the officials in question. To be frank, no government is conceivable that is free from politics for the simple reason that power itself is political in nature. So, the idea that a government free from any political legacy is incorruptible and can take revolutionary decisions, for instance, to remove the city's traffic woes once and for all is inherently misplaced. On the contrary, revamping the city's collapsing traffic system is possible by even politics as usual as it has been the case with Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia. The leaders like Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir Mohammad and others were not revolutionaries in the classical sense of the term. They were all politicians of the old stock, but had the will to change.
The capital city of Dhaka is already ranked one of the least liveable cities (ranked 6th by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)'s Global Liveability Index 2024 report). Evidently, the malfunctioning traffic system is an important factor in this ever-deteriorating liveability index.
It is believed that the interim government with its visionary leader, Dr Yunus, can at least set the ball of revolutionising city's traffic system rolling.

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