Managing Dhaka's impossible traffic
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Nizam Ahmad
BANGLADESH government has been struggling to ease road congestion and chaos that degenerates everyday. Some say, subsidized CNG has flooded Dhaka roads with cars that run cheap on CNG. Easy banking credits also permit modest income earners to own cars and ride inexpensively. Abandoning 'decentralization' of Dhaka also brings people into the capital city for work, court matters, schools, hospitals, and to pursue government regulatory details. If the Upazilla system or decentralization had been allowed to work the load on Dhaka would have been significantly lesser as scores of people would have been willingly choosing to work and live outside a big city. Lack of electricity also makes people swarm into Dhaka and its periphery to set up businesses and homes. If there were sufficient electricity countrywide, people, on 'cost effective' grounds, would have also gone far away from Dhaka to set up their establishments.
While these, amongst many others, could be reasons for the flooding of motor vehicles and the subsequent congestions, the reason for total indiscipline and disarray on the city streets is pitiable traffic management by the police. For long, the police and the public mistrust each other. The police, being understaffed, underpaid, and under-trained, cannot manage the traffic other than clearing roads for flag cars. It seems Dhaka is meant for the VIPs and none else. Our police do not have the 'know-how', resources, the motivation, or people's faith in them to professionally manage our traffic. We freely flout traffic rules as we know that we can bribe our way out when doing something wrong. Information travels fast in a marketplace which is why despite the rules, courts, officers, and magistrates it is established in our minds and in practices that it is money in the pocket not the bylaws in the books that will allow us to go free when guilty.
Add to this, the wide prevalence of fake driving licenses which means that majority of the drivers are unaware of basic traffic rules, laws, or road courtesies. The police do not have proper licensing agencies and if they did our roads would have been controlled and safe despite the flooding of cars. Of course, the roads are inadequate or too narrow. For narrow roads blame the government as it is they who plan the roads, design it, and award the building of roads to private bidders, mostly on political grounds or by corrupt means.
The national highways, generally funded by the World Bank and other donors, are worse as they are single carriageways and again too narrow. Headlong accidents are the direct consequences of single carriageways and fake driving licenses. There are no rest areas [for toilets or tea] and whatever we have is under private initiative spontaneously developed. The government had no plans for such rest areas even though safe driving demands that both drivers and passengers must stop, refresh themselves, and hit the road again. VIPS and high government officials usually use countless government bungalows on highways to rest and pee and assume the public uses private buildings along the road, so why have them specifically built and unnecessarily expend government or taxpayers' money. What about pedestrian crossings? Do they exist in Bangladesh? Those few in Dhaka cities are over-bridge crossings and cannot be used by the elderly, the physically challenged, or those carrying some heavy shopping. These are many design flaws that lead to unsafe roads and avoidable fatalities.
Had our roads been made and funded by the private sector, many of the company owners, under a corruption-free judiciary, would have been in the prison for not incorporating road safety measures in their designs and construction. Why the roads are not dual carriage ways or why there are no highway police patrols to penalize rash drivers, is a question that both the government and the World Bank must answer although both remain inaccessible and unanswerable to the public.
These are major defects that keep our roads in chaos and in perennial danger to pedestrians and passengers. However, to make our roads safe and sound and less congested government must hand over our traffic management to the private investors and entrepreneurs. The police are underpaid and there is no harmonious relationship between the users of road and the managers of the road who are the police. The police only respond to VIP traffic to retain their jobs but reacts almost violently, most indecorously, and unjustly with rest of the public. The police however revamped cannot bring traffic order. The traffic management should be privatized and several operators can be given the task in competition with one another or with the police.
However, Bangladesh is possibly the rare country where even privatization fails. Recently, newspapers reported that our land ports would return to government management as these failed in private hands. If privatization was correctly done it does not fail. Privatization here may have been planned to fail as there are big corrupt money makers. It is known to all that government officials and their chosen private businesses operate hand in hand as a vested class in most commercial and development activities. United Kingdom's Heathrow Airport, British Telecommunications, and many more are successes because of correct privatization and there is no question of these going back to government control.
Many of Dhaka's inner roads have private traffic wardens and they are doing a fine job without their lack of legal power to penalize offenders. The principle of private risk taking, maximization of profits, creative enterprise, and the greater efficiency that bureaucrats never possess is sufficient to see that where government employees fail the entrepreneurs succeed. How many police sergeants are sacked or suspended due to their negligence in duty or for illegal acts as taking bribes? None have. The police and the government have taken these negative aspects as a permanent part of their system. It is understandable why it happens but to accept it as a regular feature is politically defeating, and culturally and morally deplorable.
There is a way to solve our problems and it is the private competitive world that can effectively rise to the challenge. Entrepreneurs will procure technology, stay vigilant and proactive, invest their savings, organize skill and resources, remain accountable for their failings and learn from these, train and reward their manpower and Dhaka's roads and our national highways can become the safest, fastest, and least noisy in the world. But, it is important that privatization does not fail because it was incorrectly designed by the vested coteries. It is also important that a government body that is responsible for safety of the people such as the police is also completely independent and obeys none but the law.
People must realize or wake up to the fact that wherever government is involved stories of failures and corruption are rife. Under government control, administration, and development plans we have no electricity, we have fertilizer plants that have no supply of gas, we have no clean drinking water, we have inefficient and corrupt ports, and poor health care despite the funds and the list goes on. Whatever good that is happening in the country is by sheer private drive that operates but restrictively under over-regulatory obstructions of the government. And, whatever wrong or obnoxious that we see in the private sector can be readily eliminated with firm Rule of Law if established. Only if the government takes the back seat and allows the people to act with freedom, to innovate, to discover newer ways, and to raise their efficiency through competition in the market can we have a thriving country and a safe road traffic system in the shortest period ever.
E-mail: nizam.ahmad@gmail.com
BANGLADESH government has been struggling to ease road congestion and chaos that degenerates everyday. Some say, subsidized CNG has flooded Dhaka roads with cars that run cheap on CNG. Easy banking credits also permit modest income earners to own cars and ride inexpensively. Abandoning 'decentralization' of Dhaka also brings people into the capital city for work, court matters, schools, hospitals, and to pursue government regulatory details. If the Upazilla system or decentralization had been allowed to work the load on Dhaka would have been significantly lesser as scores of people would have been willingly choosing to work and live outside a big city. Lack of electricity also makes people swarm into Dhaka and its periphery to set up businesses and homes. If there were sufficient electricity countrywide, people, on 'cost effective' grounds, would have also gone far away from Dhaka to set up their establishments.
While these, amongst many others, could be reasons for the flooding of motor vehicles and the subsequent congestions, the reason for total indiscipline and disarray on the city streets is pitiable traffic management by the police. For long, the police and the public mistrust each other. The police, being understaffed, underpaid, and under-trained, cannot manage the traffic other than clearing roads for flag cars. It seems Dhaka is meant for the VIPs and none else. Our police do not have the 'know-how', resources, the motivation, or people's faith in them to professionally manage our traffic. We freely flout traffic rules as we know that we can bribe our way out when doing something wrong. Information travels fast in a marketplace which is why despite the rules, courts, officers, and magistrates it is established in our minds and in practices that it is money in the pocket not the bylaws in the books that will allow us to go free when guilty.
Add to this, the wide prevalence of fake driving licenses which means that majority of the drivers are unaware of basic traffic rules, laws, or road courtesies. The police do not have proper licensing agencies and if they did our roads would have been controlled and safe despite the flooding of cars. Of course, the roads are inadequate or too narrow. For narrow roads blame the government as it is they who plan the roads, design it, and award the building of roads to private bidders, mostly on political grounds or by corrupt means.
The national highways, generally funded by the World Bank and other donors, are worse as they are single carriageways and again too narrow. Headlong accidents are the direct consequences of single carriageways and fake driving licenses. There are no rest areas [for toilets or tea] and whatever we have is under private initiative spontaneously developed. The government had no plans for such rest areas even though safe driving demands that both drivers and passengers must stop, refresh themselves, and hit the road again. VIPS and high government officials usually use countless government bungalows on highways to rest and pee and assume the public uses private buildings along the road, so why have them specifically built and unnecessarily expend government or taxpayers' money. What about pedestrian crossings? Do they exist in Bangladesh? Those few in Dhaka cities are over-bridge crossings and cannot be used by the elderly, the physically challenged, or those carrying some heavy shopping. These are many design flaws that lead to unsafe roads and avoidable fatalities.
Had our roads been made and funded by the private sector, many of the company owners, under a corruption-free judiciary, would have been in the prison for not incorporating road safety measures in their designs and construction. Why the roads are not dual carriage ways or why there are no highway police patrols to penalize rash drivers, is a question that both the government and the World Bank must answer although both remain inaccessible and unanswerable to the public.
These are major defects that keep our roads in chaos and in perennial danger to pedestrians and passengers. However, to make our roads safe and sound and less congested government must hand over our traffic management to the private investors and entrepreneurs. The police are underpaid and there is no harmonious relationship between the users of road and the managers of the road who are the police. The police only respond to VIP traffic to retain their jobs but reacts almost violently, most indecorously, and unjustly with rest of the public. The police however revamped cannot bring traffic order. The traffic management should be privatized and several operators can be given the task in competition with one another or with the police.
However, Bangladesh is possibly the rare country where even privatization fails. Recently, newspapers reported that our land ports would return to government management as these failed in private hands. If privatization was correctly done it does not fail. Privatization here may have been planned to fail as there are big corrupt money makers. It is known to all that government officials and their chosen private businesses operate hand in hand as a vested class in most commercial and development activities. United Kingdom's Heathrow Airport, British Telecommunications, and many more are successes because of correct privatization and there is no question of these going back to government control.
Many of Dhaka's inner roads have private traffic wardens and they are doing a fine job without their lack of legal power to penalize offenders. The principle of private risk taking, maximization of profits, creative enterprise, and the greater efficiency that bureaucrats never possess is sufficient to see that where government employees fail the entrepreneurs succeed. How many police sergeants are sacked or suspended due to their negligence in duty or for illegal acts as taking bribes? None have. The police and the government have taken these negative aspects as a permanent part of their system. It is understandable why it happens but to accept it as a regular feature is politically defeating, and culturally and morally deplorable.
There is a way to solve our problems and it is the private competitive world that can effectively rise to the challenge. Entrepreneurs will procure technology, stay vigilant and proactive, invest their savings, organize skill and resources, remain accountable for their failings and learn from these, train and reward their manpower and Dhaka's roads and our national highways can become the safest, fastest, and least noisy in the world. But, it is important that privatization does not fail because it was incorrectly designed by the vested coteries. It is also important that a government body that is responsible for safety of the people such as the police is also completely independent and obeys none but the law.
People must realize or wake up to the fact that wherever government is involved stories of failures and corruption are rife. Under government control, administration, and development plans we have no electricity, we have fertilizer plants that have no supply of gas, we have no clean drinking water, we have inefficient and corrupt ports, and poor health care despite the funds and the list goes on. Whatever good that is happening in the country is by sheer private drive that operates but restrictively under over-regulatory obstructions of the government. And, whatever wrong or obnoxious that we see in the private sector can be readily eliminated with firm Rule of Law if established. Only if the government takes the back seat and allows the people to act with freedom, to innovate, to discover newer ways, and to raise their efficiency through competition in the market can we have a thriving country and a safe road traffic system in the shortest period ever.
E-mail: nizam.ahmad@gmail.com