Salvaging the city from traffic congestion
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Shahiduzzaman Khan
THE capital witnesses unprecedented congestion from morning on almost every working day in most parts of the city, causing untold sufferings to hundreds of commuters. The situation turned severe late last week as thousands of people started for railway, bus and ferry terminals after office hours to journey to their homes on a three-day holiday.
Indeed, an overwhelming number of recklessly driven public transports are contributing to the intense traffic jams and the lack of road safety. 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 so far. As such, traffic congestion in the city is becoming unmanageable, providing no visible solution in the near future. People are getting stuck in an intolerable gridlock. They are being forced to wait inside vehicles for hours on their way to and from workplaces. Official statistics show over 0.2 million buses, trucks, and cars now ply the city roads, while about 20,000 vehicles on an average add to the number every year. Dhaka city has only seven percent roads network against the international standard of 25 percent.
Ahead of Ramadan, the traffic department held a meeting to take some measures on easing the city's traffic congestion. The meeting reportedly discussed a Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DPM) report which identified 35 reasons for traffic congestion in Dhaka city (inhabited by nearly 14 million people) and suggested 17 ways to solve the problem. However there appears to be no move on the part of the government to solve the problem in line with the findings of the study.
After the deadly bus-train collision at Maghbazar last month, the government has also announced yet another set of plans. Following the recommendations of Dhaka Transport Plan (DTP), the present government plans to construct three expressway routes in the city: from Old Airport to Jatrabari via Tejgaon, Maghbazar and Malibagh, another from Sonargaon Hotel to Gulistan via Kataban and New Market and the other from New Airport to Kuril. The government also plans to set up an underground rail track from Joydevpur to Kamalapur. An elevated circular railway and a Dhaka-Narayanganj-Gazipur-Dhaka elevated expressway are also under consideration.
Since the approval of Strategic Transport Planning (STP), only two-and-half kilometres of roads have been constructed so far. But there are many factors that are compounding the existing problems. The housing developers, for example, are not only filling up the water-bodies, violating the law. They are also generating huge traffic jams by not constructing sufficient roads to ease the traffic congestions.
Urban planners and communication experts have identified multi-dimensional causes behind traffic jams in Dhaka. These include rapid unplanned urbanisation, high population rate, high rate of increase of vehicles, plying of vehicles of different speed on the same roads, unauthorised parking, illegal occupation of roads, non-compliance with traffic rules, a lack of traffic rule enforcement, lack of coordination among different agencies and ministries for managing city traffic, reckless driving and frequent changes in policies. Even the existing footpaths, foot bridges and under passes are occupied by encroachers, beggars and hawkers. Moreover, these places are neither clean nor safe.
Dhaka will be the sixth most populous city of the world by 2010 and second by 2015. In order to address this issue, there is no alternative to decentralisation. Rehabilitation of the low income people, especially the 1.5 million garment workers near the Export Processing Zones (EPZs) may solve the problem to some extent. Since most of the educational institutions these days are located in the residential areas of the city, introduction of school buses is very essential. As there are no quality schools in posh city areas at present, students may use buses instead of using private cars, which significantly contributes to the traffic congestions in small areas.
Over the years, efforts have been made for the improvement of traffic management, unfortunately many of such initiatives went in vain. In spite of launching synchronised signal system, the traffic police are seen controlling traffic at busy intersections manually. In synchronised system, if a vehicle gets green signal at one point it indicates that it will get the same signal at every intersection. And it is really a challenging task, especially in a mega city like Dhaka where motorised vehicles of different speed and shapes and many non-motorised vehicles ply on the same roads. Besides, the traffic police are found giving passage to VIPs, interrupting the signals.
The immediate past caretaker government approved a 20-year Strategic Transport Plan (STP) in 2008 to establish an integrated environment friendly traffic management system for greater Dhaka. In order to address the existing problems, the plan includes both short-term and long-term policies to be taken for implementation. At the same time STP suggests the institutional capacity building of different agencies including Rajuk, DCC and BRTA. Unfortunately it's a common feature in Bangladesh that even the most well thought-out plans do not see the light of day.
While a growing urban culture has been adding increasing numbers of motor vehicles in the capital over recent years, all successive governments failed to urgently execute city infrastructure projects on time.
Urgent 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. At one stage, the previous government had banned vehicles over 20 years old and that had a positive impact. But now the worst vehicles seemed to have returned to the streets. The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) has turned a deaf ear to this problem. There is no doubt that such a problem is also contributing to severe traffic jam.
The government needs to consider enhancing the road networking capacity of the city. All other measures are also called for, in order to effectively deal with the situation. Given the will, it is certainly not impossible to make a considerable difference to the currently prevailing acute state of traffic jam.
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szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com
THE capital witnesses unprecedented congestion from morning on almost every working day in most parts of the city, causing untold sufferings to hundreds of commuters. The situation turned severe late last week as thousands of people started for railway, bus and ferry terminals after office hours to journey to their homes on a three-day holiday.
Indeed, an overwhelming number of recklessly driven public transports are contributing to the intense traffic jams and the lack of road safety. 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 so far. As such, traffic congestion in the city is becoming unmanageable, providing no visible solution in the near future. People are getting stuck in an intolerable gridlock. They are being forced to wait inside vehicles for hours on their way to and from workplaces. Official statistics show over 0.2 million buses, trucks, and cars now ply the city roads, while about 20,000 vehicles on an average add to the number every year. Dhaka city has only seven percent roads network against the international standard of 25 percent.
Ahead of Ramadan, the traffic department held a meeting to take some measures on easing the city's traffic congestion. The meeting reportedly discussed a Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DPM) report which identified 35 reasons for traffic congestion in Dhaka city (inhabited by nearly 14 million people) and suggested 17 ways to solve the problem. However there appears to be no move on the part of the government to solve the problem in line with the findings of the study.
After the deadly bus-train collision at Maghbazar last month, the government has also announced yet another set of plans. Following the recommendations of Dhaka Transport Plan (DTP), the present government plans to construct three expressway routes in the city: from Old Airport to Jatrabari via Tejgaon, Maghbazar and Malibagh, another from Sonargaon Hotel to Gulistan via Kataban and New Market and the other from New Airport to Kuril. The government also plans to set up an underground rail track from Joydevpur to Kamalapur. An elevated circular railway and a Dhaka-Narayanganj-Gazipur-Dhaka elevated expressway are also under consideration.
Since the approval of Strategic Transport Planning (STP), only two-and-half kilometres of roads have been constructed so far. But there are many factors that are compounding the existing problems. The housing developers, for example, are not only filling up the water-bodies, violating the law. They are also generating huge traffic jams by not constructing sufficient roads to ease the traffic congestions.
Urban planners and communication experts have identified multi-dimensional causes behind traffic jams in Dhaka. These include rapid unplanned urbanisation, high population rate, high rate of increase of vehicles, plying of vehicles of different speed on the same roads, unauthorised parking, illegal occupation of roads, non-compliance with traffic rules, a lack of traffic rule enforcement, lack of coordination among different agencies and ministries for managing city traffic, reckless driving and frequent changes in policies. Even the existing footpaths, foot bridges and under passes are occupied by encroachers, beggars and hawkers. Moreover, these places are neither clean nor safe.
Dhaka will be the sixth most populous city of the world by 2010 and second by 2015. In order to address this issue, there is no alternative to decentralisation. Rehabilitation of the low income people, especially the 1.5 million garment workers near the Export Processing Zones (EPZs) may solve the problem to some extent. Since most of the educational institutions these days are located in the residential areas of the city, introduction of school buses is very essential. As there are no quality schools in posh city areas at present, students may use buses instead of using private cars, which significantly contributes to the traffic congestions in small areas.
Over the years, efforts have been made for the improvement of traffic management, unfortunately many of such initiatives went in vain. In spite of launching synchronised signal system, the traffic police are seen controlling traffic at busy intersections manually. In synchronised system, if a vehicle gets green signal at one point it indicates that it will get the same signal at every intersection. And it is really a challenging task, especially in a mega city like Dhaka where motorised vehicles of different speed and shapes and many non-motorised vehicles ply on the same roads. Besides, the traffic police are found giving passage to VIPs, interrupting the signals.
The immediate past caretaker government approved a 20-year Strategic Transport Plan (STP) in 2008 to establish an integrated environment friendly traffic management system for greater Dhaka. In order to address the existing problems, the plan includes both short-term and long-term policies to be taken for implementation. At the same time STP suggests the institutional capacity building of different agencies including Rajuk, DCC and BRTA. Unfortunately it's a common feature in Bangladesh that even the most well thought-out plans do not see the light of day.
While a growing urban culture has been adding increasing numbers of motor vehicles in the capital over recent years, all successive governments failed to urgently execute city infrastructure projects on time.
Urgent 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. At one stage, the previous government had banned vehicles over 20 years old and that had a positive impact. But now the worst vehicles seemed to have returned to the streets. The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) has turned a deaf ear to this problem. There is no doubt that such a problem is also contributing to severe traffic jam.
The government needs to consider enhancing the road networking capacity of the city. All other measures are also called for, in order to effectively deal with the situation. Given the will, it is certainly not impossible to make a considerable difference to the currently prevailing acute state of traffic jam.
...............................................................
szkhan@thefinancialexpress-bd.com