Students face consequences of traffic congestion

One day, I started my class at Independent University, Bangladesh; one of my students came thirty minutes late in the class. This particular student ranks one of the best and normally does not become late in the class. On being asked the reason, he pointed out that the traffic congestion made him late come to the class. The fact of the matter is traffic congestion makes us late in completing all our activities and this chronic problem also plays a huge negative impact on our education sector. Question is how this problem implies to the education sector. Before pointing out this fact, I truly want to portray some of the scenario of this terrible problem of Dhaka city. Can we mitigate this problem from Dhaka city ? Surely we can. We simply need to know how to tackle this problem. There are certainly some ways to reduce the chronic traffic jam of Dhaka city. If we closely monitor we can figure out that many vehicles take some unauthorised U-turn that actually causes real traffic dilemma. We can find a way to avoid this U-turn, but we just let things go the way it goes. We must find out some designated areas that can be used for this U-turn. Speaking about U-turn it should be mentioned that some cars or buses have some special privileges to take turn anywhere; thanks to some traffic police officers who actually 'allow' these vehicles to take wrong turn. We actually do not know that our traffic police can make the difference. It is truly an urgent step to form a body to monitor these traffic police. Sometimes some police are seen to play with their sticks while buses, cars and other vehicles fight to get away from the dreadful traffic. In this regard again we must say that our administration needs to be active to take action against any mischief. It is obvious that private cars make this traffic more precarious. These cars run every nook and corner of the city and do not mind sneaking through narrow roads that causes more damage to the whole scenario. Is it necessary to park these cars in front of schools that make traffic jolt more serious? Since we are talking here about the educational institutions, these educational institutions make huge blockages on the roads through the private cars of the students. Especially in the schools, located in the crowded areas, when there are many parents who come with their children, come by cars and park their cars just in front of the schools that causes huge traffic congestion. People would definitely do that, but our administration needs to make sure to prevent this. I was studying in Ohio, USA and I have seen many people, especially some teenagers try to break the rules while driving the cars, but they cannot do that because of the tight administration and tight rules and regulations. It is obvious that if we could have strict implementation of rules and regulations, we could have prevented many problems. Traffic congestion does have huge impact and obviously negative impacts on our students. Every now and then students miss their classes and exams due to the traffic congestions, and furthermore, when someone needs to wait a huge amount of time on the roads, we truly need to analyse how heshe could possibly concentrate on studies. Right now clash between students and bus conductor or driver is also a common scenario in Dhaka city. This conflict actually curdles the whole situation. Conflict can take place, but to mitigate these our police officers must come to the spot in time. But it is surprising to see the roles our police play in this regard. Since we cannot tackle this situation in time, people along with the students taste the unprecedented sufferings of this terrible traffic. We actually cannot blame it, if we cannot stop this huge traffic congestion, it will bring more clashes and disasters for us, which could ultimately deteriorate the minds of our students. For some recommendation of how we could minimize this huge problem, we can accept some truths. It is obvious that all roads in Dhaka city are congested or narrow; many roads are quite wide to meet even the current spurt. But we allow unauthorized parking that squeezes all roads here in Dhaka city. To face the current horrific situation we must take some corrective measures right away. We must not allow any vehicle park on streets where buses and public cars are operating every now and then. It is not necessary that cars must sit in front of the office where traffic is terrible; we need to design some spaces where we can park these cars. Just for an example, it takes almost two hours from Dhanmondi to come to Bashundhora, where couples of reputed private universities are located. When students come from a distance to these places, they need to actually fight to reach to their destination. We must make sure that we do something different to tackle this situation. We need to provide a sound environment especially to our students who would play role to enhance the development process of our country. Not only in educational institutions in Bashundhora, in many different institutions students do go from different places and they need to spend a great deal of their valuable time only to reach their schools, colleges or universities. Traffic congestion-- 'the greatest' problem of this beautiful city must be solved in no time. If we talk about development process of our country, we must find a way to minimize the traffic that becomes a common part of our daily life. We do not know how much energy and time we spend for this traffic congestion and for these expenses, how we are getting backward day by day. This problem is acute, especially for our students and education institutions since they are the future of our country and we should not make things complicated for them. The writer is lecturer at School of Business in Independent University, Bangladesh, email: sahmed@ashland.edu.