Need for strict traffic rules enforcement

Traffic congestion in the capital has reached an unbearable stage in recent days. It is increasing beyond manageable proportions, providing no visible solution in the near future. The gridlock is taking toll on the country's trade and economic activities by cutting the people's valuable working hours.
A report in the FE this week note that poor traffic management, unplanned urbanisation, Dhaka-centric economic activities, transport mismanagement and many other things are largely responsible for terrible tailbacks at many points in the city. Construction of the Mogbazar-Mouchak flyover made the roads in the area unusable and its impact is being felt all over the city. At the same time, the increased number of vehicles carrying schoolchildren made it difficult for law-enforcers to control traffic during the peak hours.
According to a Roads and Highways Department (RHD) study on Regional Development Planning (RDP), the city dwellers waste 11 minutes on an average at every major intersection around the city. Also, traffic jam creates an adverse impact on the economy, largely on the service sector, by increasing costs. At the same time, cost of wasted fuel, environment pollution and sufferings of lower income groups of people continue to rise significantly due to such congestions.
According to another report, roads in the metropolis are being constructed without following proper guidelines and conducting feasibility studies. Due to fault in designs, hardly any desired benefit is visible from the constructed or upgraded roads. In this way, the country incurs billions of taka in losses.
So far, various measures were put into operation to solve the nagging traffic jams. But these fizzle out no sooner than attempts were made for their enforcement. The main reason of the moves drawing a blank was lack of adequate homework, flawed planning and above all very poor management.
A recent study revealed that some Tk 200 billion is lost every year in traffic jams due to loss of valuable time in the maze of gridlocks in the streets of Dhaka. Traffic jam, it said, is responsible for taking away the people's 8.15 million working hours, 40 per cent of which are business hours. Tk 20 billion is lost due to 3.2 million business hours wasted in congestion.
The government is partly to blame for much of the chaos on the roads. It approved universities, commercial establishments, garment factories, schools, clinics and wholesale kitchen markets at busy areas or close to residential localities to create chaos in the city. Posh shopping malls cause traffic jams on important city roads. Panthapath and Sonargaon intersections bear out this, quite clearly. Shoppers love to park on the street keeping mall parking lots vacant. They seem to prefer having shopping centres without bothering to pay for tickets going to the basement to park or looking for the driver.
Indeed, an overwhelming number of recklessly driven public transports are contributing to the intense traffic gridlocks. Successive governments had taken up a number of short-term plans like construction of overpasses and underpasses for vehicles, connecting roads, bypasses and east-west roads. But none of those initiatives was implemented in totality so far.
In fact, problem of traffic jam will hardly be solved until or unless the city's population is controlled since hundreds of new vehicles are hitting the roads every day. Also, there is no coordination among different implementation authorities, which deal with the city traffic. Although the communications ministry is the highest authority to look after the city traffic, it did not take any mentionable steps except banning the 20-year-old vehicles so far.
On its part, the government took quite a number of efforts for the improvement of traffic management. Unfortunately many of such initiatives went in vain. In spite of launching sychronised signal system, the traffic police are still seen controlling traffic signal of busy intersections manually. Under a such system, if a vehicle gets green signal at one point, it indicates that it will get the same signal in every intersection. But in reality, this is not happening.
In order to address the issue of haphazard parking of vehicles which is one of the major contributors to traffic jam on many of the city thoroughfares, more multi-storied parking lots do need to be built in the busiest parts of the city with concerted efforts of the government and the private sector. Such parking lots need to be run on a commercial basis. This will otherwise help ease traffic congestion problem to a considerable extent.
On the other hand, immediate attention should also be given for effective control of the movement of buses in and around the metropolis. Bus stoppages do need to be moved away from all traffic intersections. There has to be an effective end to random stopping along busy streets blocking smooth passage of other vehicles as well.
Town planners suggest immediate expansion of the mega city and spreading the economic activities to the cities and towns, adjacent to the capital, to discourage people coming to the capital. Relocation of manufacturing units, specially the apparel units, from Dhaka is also deemed important to lessen the population pressure on the overpopulated city.
Also, the traffic management and implementation of rules need supervised work on the ground level both to infuse efficiency as well as to fight petty graft which is rampant. Management skills of the ground traffic personnel ought to be raised and strict enforcement of rules ensured with no compromise at any level. Awareness campaigns may otherwise be introduced round the year to educate people on traffic rules, instead of observing occasional traffic weeks which leave no impression on the overall scenario at all.
     szkhan@dhaka.net