Revisiting tailbacks on roads

There is something called stale news. Readers do usually take little interest in the content of news items that is already known to them. But one news that Dhaka newspapers never count as stale is the traffic tailback on the city roads. They have been publishing both news items and pictures relentlessly highlighting the long tailbacks on major city streets and the consequent sufferings of the commuters. The readers too, seemingly, are not tired of reading the same old news about their own plight.
A question must be haunting many minds: Will the traffic-related woes ever come to an end?  Such a possibility appears to be remote. The government has constructed a few flyovers at some points of the Dhaka city and some more are now under construction at a cost of billions of taka. Besides, a few capital-intensive projects, namely, the elevated expressway, metro rail and bus-rapid transit (BRT), are now in the process of implementation. The main objective behind taking up all these projects is easing the city's nagging traffic problems.
The flyovers, obviously, would help ease traffic movements at some road intersections where the problem of sever traffic congestion is somewhat perennial. But the same problem would invariably be transferred to other road intersections on the same traffic routes where there would be no flyovers.
Unless the flyovers are extended from one end to the other without any break, the benefits, in terms of traffic movement, can be hardly reaped.
The traffic movement through the New Airport Road is a case in point. The vehicles coming from the airport can avoid the Banani rail crossing because of the overpass. But they get stuck up at Kakoli intersection and again at the entry point of Mohakhali flyover and then in front of the Prime Minister's Office. The process of getting stuck at other intersections throughout the onward journey on working days in particular remains almost guaranteed.
The metro rail, when completed, would help make trouble-free journey by a small section of city residents. Similarly, the elevated expressway would facilitate unhindered movement of a limited number of vehicles. All these projects, undoubtedly, are designed to ease the city's traffic problem. But by the time these major projects are implemented, the number of population and vehicles would go up to a considerable extent. True, the relevant planners have taken into cognizance the increase in the number of both population and vehicles. But such estimates may not be of any use, finally.
It is very unlikely these projects would be able to bring about any major change in the situation on the ground. There remains little scope to make any major improvement in the city's existing road network which cannot accommodate the current load of the traffic. With such limited road space, it is also difficult for the traffic authorities to be innovative.
The government cannot ask people living in other parts of the country not to come to the capital city.  Nor it can dissuade city residents from buying vehicles for private use.
However, it can surely take measures that would help reduce the unending flow of people to Dhaka and buying of private cars.
At the moment, more than one tenth of the country's population lives in Dhaka city that spreads over an area of a few square kilometres. People from allover the country have been coming to the city in endless streams in search of almost everything including jobs, business, education, properties. Even families are migrating from headquarters of outreach districts to the capital to secure better education for their school-going children.
There is a growing feeling that all good things are found in Dhaka. To secure a few of it, people give up the relaxed living conditions in rural areas or district towns and migrate to the Dhaka's troubled life.
One of the principal reasons for people coming to Dhaka is the centralized decision making process followed by the government. Even small decisions which can be taken at the field level are referred to the centre.
The decision-making needs to be decentralized so that people are not required to come to Dhaka for lobbying and getting things done. The government should also see to that the facilities that attract people to come to Dhaka are created in district headquarters and other urban centres. It should build the same on its own and extend incentives to private parties who would invest funds for creation of such facilities.
Besides, the authorities have to rein in the ongoing traffic anarchy on the city streets. Poor traffic management coupled with highhandedness of the private bus operators and workers is responsible for such a situation. The way things are going now, it is hard to expect any change in the current state of anarchy.
The government, in the first place, should eliminate all unfit and unauthorized vehicles from the roads of Dhaka city and replace them with new buses, including air-conditioned ones, owned by the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC). With an efficient bus service in place, many middleclass families would stop using their cars on working days and prefer to use public transports. It remains a puzzle as to why the BRTC and other private operators are not introducing air-conditioned buses on city roads when the demand for the same is very high.
[email protected]