Combating the terrible traffic in Dhaka city is becoming increasingly difficult. Chaos on the road continues despite the fact that policymakers and government bodies have so far taken a number of initiatives to redress the traffic woes. What is missing is long-term coordination as well as good governance in the matters of project adoption and implementation. Ad-hoc measures cannot produce desired results.
In this context, a review of the latest move by the Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority (DTCA) is in order. In a recent meeting, the authority unveiled a big plan to manage and operate buses across the capital city. According to the plan, the government will form a company to manage the bus operators named Bus Network Management Company. To test the viability of the company some 105 articulated buses will be operated in two routes under the company. If successful, the total number of routes will be 90 instead of the existing 200-plus routes. A maximum number of 10 companies will run the buses on these routes. A government committee will supervise the operators.
The plan, developed on the basis of a study conducted by the World Bank, seems to be a realistic one. It may be recalled that late Mayor Annisul Huq took an initiative to reshuffle the current routes and introduce new routes. His plan was: the current 200-plus bus routes would be replaced with six basic routes; 4,000 new buses would make the fleet replacing some 6,000 existing buses and minibuses; and six large holding companies of the bus operators would replace the current 150 small owners' companies.
The main upside of the latest plan is that the policymakers and authorities are now acknowledging that improvement of bus service within the existing roads and infrastructure will be quite helpful in combating the traffic situation.
The demand and essentiality of the buses as public transport in Dhaka are also reflected in the statistics. In the first 10 months of last year, 2017, some 2959 new buses got registration to ply on the roads in the capital city while the number of new minibuses got registration was 137, according to the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).
But, there are some downsides of the proposed plan. Those need a critical review before launching the pilot project.
The first flaw is the plan to run articulated buses. Previous experience showed that this type of bus is not fit for the city of Dhaka. Most of the roads, especially, the intersections, junctions and turnings are not sufficiently wide to accommodate the articulation of this type of bus. Earlier, Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) introduced some articulated buses in the city. Within a year or two a large number of all the bendy buses turned non-operative due to poor maintenance and non-supportive road conditions. Why do the authorities want to repeat a failed experiment?
Instead of running the bendy buses, double-decker buses may be more useful. In the city, only BRTC is operating a number of double-decker buses which can accommodate a large number of commuters. These buses also occupy smaller spaces compared to articulated buses while manoeuvring on the roads as well as in the depots and bus stands. Procurement and maintenances costs of double-decker buses are lower than articulated buses. True that articulated buses are more popular in many developed countries compared to double-decker buses. But, it is not prudent to replicate the model of developed countries where density of population is thin and roads are reasonably wide.
Even the low-floor Chinese buses, currently plying on the road by the BRTC may be better option than articulated buses. Almost all the privately-run regular buses in Dhaka are not friendly for the passengers to access due to higher floor, steeper steps and narrow gates. Though minibuses have low floors, access is still challenging, especially for the women, children, elderly and physically-challenged people.
In fact, selecting the appropriate type or types of vehicle is quite important to make the proposed project effective. In the name of trial run or pilot project, there is little scope to do any expensive and flawed experiment with wrong types of vehicles.
Another downside of the proposed project is the establishing and running the network management company by the government. It appears that the government will make investment to set up the company. It is feared that inefficiency, irregularity and corruption will trouble a government-owned company.
It is still not clear whether private operators will make investment for the new buses on these routes or they will get some generous financing from the government. The financing part is the most critical part of the project.
The transport sector of the country is considered to be the most criminalised and unruly sector. Backed by political leaders like ministers, lawmakers and ruling party cadres, the bus owners and workers enjoy virtual impunity for almost any kind of crime.
So, a move to reduce the number of routes and introduce new buses under new companies to operate and manage bus services in Dhaka is a right move. But how the current bus owners, especially the politically-backed trade unions of owners and workers in this sector will respond to the initiative is critical. There is a need for wide-ranging consultation among the stakeholders and building of consensus.
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