Too stressed from traffic jams
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
Dhaka, a city of over 10 million and Bangladesh's biggest city in terms of population, is also noted to be a specially long suffering one, from traffic jams in particular. It was hoped that the present government, with its pledged enthusiastic approach to many issues of major public interest, would move with particular speed and effectiveness to address this long lingering issue. Stressed nerves and costlier health effects result from the horrendes traffic jams that residents have to suffer regularly.
People are desperate for deliverance. But the traffic scene in this city has been turning only worse. According to reports, in many places most of the time, traffic gets held up motionlessly for more than half an hour or so without any plausible explanation for the same. Thus, a destination to be arrived at in twenty minutes needs at least one and half hours or more to be reached, creating great hardships. Many people are known to be falling ill as a result. If the traffic situation now is so bad, how severely it would stress commuters during the coming Ramadan month when their coping strengths would be understandably at a lower level from fasting, can only be imagined.
Traffic department officials, on being asked, say many things ranging from inadequate roads in the city and the absence of a sufficient number of infrastructures such as flyovers and expressways. But only more devoted traffic management by traffic policemen or their doing their job with enthusiasm and care, can much alleviate the traffic related agonies suffered by the city's residents. The traffic policemen are seen doing a very sloppy job specially at intersections with their hand signalling although signalling lights were set up for doing this work at great cost. But media reports say that most of these lights are out of order. Why the lights should be inoperative and whose responsibility is it to operate them in support of easing traffic jams? Proper use of the automatic signalling lights can much reduce this malaise and speed up traffic movement.
Then the policemen also do nothing to buses stopping arbitrarily anywhere to allow passengers to embark or disembark. But this practice holds up other vehicles, creating jams. Real estate developers and others keep construction materials heaped up on roads but nobody obliges them to keep the roads free and clean from such encroachments. Traffic policemen turn a blind eye to rickshawpullers not moving in a single file or in lanes on roads earmarked for them but in a most carefree manner. The rickshaws, thus, get in front of engine driven vehicles and create tangles that force the latter to slow down and add to the jams. Transports are also allowed to be parked just as carelessly, constricting the road spaces and hindering easier traffic movement.
The roads are ragged or pot-holed in many places and traffic movement over these automatically become too slow. According to experts, repairing them and introducing one way movement in some sections, such as in the Rampura road, will ease movement significantly between the central and relatively newer parts of the city. All of the above reasons, and more, for traffic jams do not call for building costly infrastructures. Just more, caring and efficient traffic policing can mean so much of a difference for the better in traffic movement in the city.
People are desperate for deliverance. But the traffic scene in this city has been turning only worse. According to reports, in many places most of the time, traffic gets held up motionlessly for more than half an hour or so without any plausible explanation for the same. Thus, a destination to be arrived at in twenty minutes needs at least one and half hours or more to be reached, creating great hardships. Many people are known to be falling ill as a result. If the traffic situation now is so bad, how severely it would stress commuters during the coming Ramadan month when their coping strengths would be understandably at a lower level from fasting, can only be imagined.
Traffic department officials, on being asked, say many things ranging from inadequate roads in the city and the absence of a sufficient number of infrastructures such as flyovers and expressways. But only more devoted traffic management by traffic policemen or their doing their job with enthusiasm and care, can much alleviate the traffic related agonies suffered by the city's residents. The traffic policemen are seen doing a very sloppy job specially at intersections with their hand signalling although signalling lights were set up for doing this work at great cost. But media reports say that most of these lights are out of order. Why the lights should be inoperative and whose responsibility is it to operate them in support of easing traffic jams? Proper use of the automatic signalling lights can much reduce this malaise and speed up traffic movement.
Then the policemen also do nothing to buses stopping arbitrarily anywhere to allow passengers to embark or disembark. But this practice holds up other vehicles, creating jams. Real estate developers and others keep construction materials heaped up on roads but nobody obliges them to keep the roads free and clean from such encroachments. Traffic policemen turn a blind eye to rickshawpullers not moving in a single file or in lanes on roads earmarked for them but in a most carefree manner. The rickshaws, thus, get in front of engine driven vehicles and create tangles that force the latter to slow down and add to the jams. Transports are also allowed to be parked just as carelessly, constricting the road spaces and hindering easier traffic movement.
The roads are ragged or pot-holed in many places and traffic movement over these automatically become too slow. According to experts, repairing them and introducing one way movement in some sections, such as in the Rampura road, will ease movement significantly between the central and relatively newer parts of the city. All of the above reasons, and more, for traffic jams do not call for building costly infrastructures. Just more, caring and efficient traffic policing can mean so much of a difference for the better in traffic movement in the city.