Need for mass transport system

Shafiqul Alam Almost on a daily basis the government draws up plans and takes initiatives aimed at addressing various problems of the people, including the traffic situation in the city, but most of those plans and initiatives remain on the drawing board for years. Meanwhile, the traffic situation has been worsening at an increasing rate. What has been done so for remains limited to banning rickshaws on certain roads, reducing the number of u-turns, fixing different lanes for slow and fast moving vehicles and the like. It is heartening to note that the congestion problem is a top priority issue of the incumbent government but a worrying aspect is that though this particular problem has been one of the top most agendas for the last 10 to 15 years, nothing has been achieved so far. Earlier, during Ramadan, all educational institutions across the country remained closed following a directive of the government, like the previous years, to ease the horrendous traffic congestion, but the result was not a positive one. From early morning till midnight Dhaka city roads remain gridlocked and it's really difficult to cope with the congestion in a hot and humid day. Cars crawling bumper to bumper have made commuting intolerable. It is time to call Dhaka a stagnant city. Most of the work till date seems short-term, leading to negative results i.e. increased congestion, travelling cost etc. Over the years much attention has been paid to banning rickshaws, but unfortunately, due attention has not been given to the need of the common people. The recent ban on plying of rickshaws on some roads has made the situation even worse as majority of the commuters like rickshaws, especially for short trips. Many mega cities, like Dhaka, have been facing the same problem despite implementation of their transportation engineers' research findings. The city of London tried to solve this problem back in 1856 and subsequently, introduced underground rail of 4.0km experimentally which served thousands of people on the opening day. Being inspired by the performance, they focused on underground rail which is popularly known as subway or metro rail or mass rapid transit. Today, they have an extensive metro rail network of more than 400km, while they have applied different mechanisms to restrict the number of private cars. In a sharp contrast to that Dhaka lacks efficient mass transport system which is one of the fundamental problems. Since November 2002, the subway project has been in the planning stage and what is worse still modification of route and alignment is going on even though the population as well as private transports have been increasing at an alarming rate. The situation of elevated expressway is nothing different. All these projects would help reduce traffic congestion as expected, but how long will people have to wait? Is not a decade (2002-2011) enough time? People desperately want relief, given that the transportation cost in the current year has increased by more than 50 per cent due to adjustment of fuel price more than once by the government. It is expected that the government will put its act together and remove the sufferings of the people without further delay. The writer can be reached at email: shafiqul0032@yahoo.com