Mismatch between car imports, road capacity
Thursday, 25 September 2008
Shahiduzzaman Khan
Everyday, 50 used or new cars are hitting the city roads on an average. The Chittagong Port has been flooded with a large number of cars. Another consignment of 5000 new and reconditioned cars are coming from Japan. The port authority is so embarrassed that it is now giving warning to the importers to lift their cars immediately or face heavy penalty.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) chairman visited the port recently to see for himself the situation arising out of an unprecedented car congestion at the shipyard. The importers have refused to take delivery of their cars until settlement of the depreciation (of the value of the arriving cars) issue. The issue is yet to be settled and the car glut is rising to a new high.
In fact, the worrying issue is that although number of cars is increasing at an otherwise high rate considering the state of the Bangladesh economy, the roads are not increasing. Some roads and lanes were widened, but that is not enough to withstand a huge traffic load. The city fathers and the planners are giving a damn to the emerging situation that signals a dead-end traffic all the time. Dhaka will soon be a chaotic and dead city - not fit for human habitation but for the robots.
Rajdhani Unnayan Kartipakkya (RAJUK), Dhaka City Corporation (DCC), Housing and Settlement Directorate (HSD) etc., agencies prepared quite a number of master plans and detailed plans on expansion of the city in the past. What's about the fate of those plans? Nobody knows. Reports say many such plans are rotting in the shelves of the ministries concerned. With the change of the government, plans also change but they do not see the light of the day. Caught under the bureaucratic tangles, master plans are never implemented.
Recently, the government launched a 20-year Strategic Transport Plan (STP) to 'revolutionise' the city's transport network. It was supposed to kick-start some of its ambitious projects like monorail, metro rail, flyovers, more widened roads and waterways etc., in and around the capital. After a ceremonial launching of the STP project, all is quiet on the transport front! Another plan styled Detailed Area Plan (DAP) was scheduled to be at a take-off stage by the time. Bilaterally a fresh move is there to go for a wider 'area planning' for Dhaka city. A city needs roads on 25 per cent of its total area but Dhaka has only roads on 8.0 per cent of its landmass and that is why the traffic situation is deteriorating. The DAP provides construction of a large road network in the city to solve the nagging transportation problem. Surprisingly, nobody is talking the DAP now. The DAP was a major component of Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (DMDP) taken up by the RAJUK.
With maintenance aspect totally ignored and drainage system abysmal, the roads in Dhaka city present a bizarre look. Despite the fact that a substantial amount of fund was allocated in the past towards building new roads or improving the already poor condition of the roads, nothing tangible has come up. With vehicles registering a phenomenal rise every year and road condition deteriorating fast, Dhaka city with its innumerable lanes and by-lanes has turned into a veritable mess. The appalling condition of the roads has now assumed an alarming proportion.
A survey conducted in the recent past on vehicle movement, mostly cars and buses, revealed that the average speed for a car or a passenger bus carrying 30 passengers was just 20 kmph. To speed up things, experts suggest building expressways or four-lane divided carriageways on high traffic density corridors. As public road building or maintenance activities have almost come to a halt, there is a growing demand for facilitating private entrepreneurs to invest in the construction and recover costs through a system of BOT (build, operate and transfer) basis.
The city planners may also think of introducing 'high speed tram network' that would ply from one end of a flyover to the other on its designated side without creating traffic jam. Other than the influx of new cars that are hitting the road everyday, there is a marked increase in the number of rickshaws, most of which, allegedly unlicensed and covering 21.9 square feet per person compared to one third of the space for a bus passenger. This unrelenting increase in the number of rickshaws has further added to traffic congestion at busy intersections.
It appears that there are no standard rules or regulations for parking in force in the capital. With road space blocked by a fleet of cars on both sides along commercial buildings and business centres, traffic movement comes to a grinding halt causing serious congestion. City roads constitute less than 10 per cent of the country's road network but carry as much as 50 per cent of the vehicular traffic. With such an overload, maintenance naturally is a nightmare.
It hardly needs to be emphasised that smooth, wide and motorable road connections would help boost economic activities, create jobs, enlarge business operations and enable phenomenal savings in fuel and cut loss in man-hour. The fact is that this sprawling metropolis is a city of dreams for many and such dreams have to be sustained by making the city habitable by widening road network, launching metro rails and waterways around it.
The most important point is to restrict movement of innumerable number of small, medium and large vehicles on the roads. Unlike many countries of the world, car import should be made in accordance with the load management of the existing roads and highways. Indiscriminate import of luxury and used cars must be given an effective check.
szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com
Everyday, 50 used or new cars are hitting the city roads on an average. The Chittagong Port has been flooded with a large number of cars. Another consignment of 5000 new and reconditioned cars are coming from Japan. The port authority is so embarrassed that it is now giving warning to the importers to lift their cars immediately or face heavy penalty.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) chairman visited the port recently to see for himself the situation arising out of an unprecedented car congestion at the shipyard. The importers have refused to take delivery of their cars until settlement of the depreciation (of the value of the arriving cars) issue. The issue is yet to be settled and the car glut is rising to a new high.
In fact, the worrying issue is that although number of cars is increasing at an otherwise high rate considering the state of the Bangladesh economy, the roads are not increasing. Some roads and lanes were widened, but that is not enough to withstand a huge traffic load. The city fathers and the planners are giving a damn to the emerging situation that signals a dead-end traffic all the time. Dhaka will soon be a chaotic and dead city - not fit for human habitation but for the robots.
Rajdhani Unnayan Kartipakkya (RAJUK), Dhaka City Corporation (DCC), Housing and Settlement Directorate (HSD) etc., agencies prepared quite a number of master plans and detailed plans on expansion of the city in the past. What's about the fate of those plans? Nobody knows. Reports say many such plans are rotting in the shelves of the ministries concerned. With the change of the government, plans also change but they do not see the light of the day. Caught under the bureaucratic tangles, master plans are never implemented.
Recently, the government launched a 20-year Strategic Transport Plan (STP) to 'revolutionise' the city's transport network. It was supposed to kick-start some of its ambitious projects like monorail, metro rail, flyovers, more widened roads and waterways etc., in and around the capital. After a ceremonial launching of the STP project, all is quiet on the transport front! Another plan styled Detailed Area Plan (DAP) was scheduled to be at a take-off stage by the time. Bilaterally a fresh move is there to go for a wider 'area planning' for Dhaka city. A city needs roads on 25 per cent of its total area but Dhaka has only roads on 8.0 per cent of its landmass and that is why the traffic situation is deteriorating. The DAP provides construction of a large road network in the city to solve the nagging transportation problem. Surprisingly, nobody is talking the DAP now. The DAP was a major component of Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (DMDP) taken up by the RAJUK.
With maintenance aspect totally ignored and drainage system abysmal, the roads in Dhaka city present a bizarre look. Despite the fact that a substantial amount of fund was allocated in the past towards building new roads or improving the already poor condition of the roads, nothing tangible has come up. With vehicles registering a phenomenal rise every year and road condition deteriorating fast, Dhaka city with its innumerable lanes and by-lanes has turned into a veritable mess. The appalling condition of the roads has now assumed an alarming proportion.
A survey conducted in the recent past on vehicle movement, mostly cars and buses, revealed that the average speed for a car or a passenger bus carrying 30 passengers was just 20 kmph. To speed up things, experts suggest building expressways or four-lane divided carriageways on high traffic density corridors. As public road building or maintenance activities have almost come to a halt, there is a growing demand for facilitating private entrepreneurs to invest in the construction and recover costs through a system of BOT (build, operate and transfer) basis.
The city planners may also think of introducing 'high speed tram network' that would ply from one end of a flyover to the other on its designated side without creating traffic jam. Other than the influx of new cars that are hitting the road everyday, there is a marked increase in the number of rickshaws, most of which, allegedly unlicensed and covering 21.9 square feet per person compared to one third of the space for a bus passenger. This unrelenting increase in the number of rickshaws has further added to traffic congestion at busy intersections.
It appears that there are no standard rules or regulations for parking in force in the capital. With road space blocked by a fleet of cars on both sides along commercial buildings and business centres, traffic movement comes to a grinding halt causing serious congestion. City roads constitute less than 10 per cent of the country's road network but carry as much as 50 per cent of the vehicular traffic. With such an overload, maintenance naturally is a nightmare.
It hardly needs to be emphasised that smooth, wide and motorable road connections would help boost economic activities, create jobs, enlarge business operations and enable phenomenal savings in fuel and cut loss in man-hour. The fact is that this sprawling metropolis is a city of dreams for many and such dreams have to be sustained by making the city habitable by widening road network, launching metro rails and waterways around it.
The most important point is to restrict movement of innumerable number of small, medium and large vehicles on the roads. Unlike many countries of the world, car import should be made in accordance with the load management of the existing roads and highways. Indiscriminate import of luxury and used cars must be given an effective check.
szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com