Bringing sanity on the roads

By Shahiduzzaman Khan

illustration image - tomorrowspaper.wordpress.com

One week after the advent of the holy month of Ramadan, traffic congestion across the city has turned out to be precarious. The endless tailback has started to create a horrendous problem for the city dwellers. With the number of Eid shoppers increasing, the capital is again witnessing unprecedented congestion from morning to evening on almost every working day in most of its parts, causing untold sufferings to thousands of commuters.

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) has recently hinted that it would launch a crackdown on the old and dilapidated vehicles during this month in order to eliminate the unfit and outdated vehicles from the roads for good. It may be mentioned that such drives are carried out by the DMP every year, but these bring no tangible results. When the drives are made with public announcements, old and dilapidated vehicles disappear from the roads for a brief period only to return soon after the drives end.

The previous government had banned running of vehicles over 20 years' old, but that failed to leave any positive impact on the overall state of traffic scenario. These old and dilapidated vehicles resurfaced on the streets after a few months. The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) has apparently turned a deaf ear to this problem so far. No doubt, this problem is also contributing to the ever increasing traffic anarchy.

Indeed, an overwhelming number of recklessly driven public transports are contributing to the alarming traffic gridlocks. Only recently, the authorities made some roads one-way and barricaded portions of some roads by laying bamboo poles in order to ease movement of vehicles. In some places, the move has yielded good result but in most others, it has failed to bring about the desired result. Successive governments had constructed a number of overpasses and underpasses connecting roads, bypasses etc., yet those are far less adequate than what are required. As such, traffic congestion in the capital is increasing beyond manageable proportions, providing no visible solution in foreseeable future.

It is a regular phenomenon that people get stuck in intolerable gridlock every day. They are 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. The Dhaka city has only 7.0 per cent road network against the international standard of 25 per cent.

Experts say traffic jam cannot be reduced until or unless population is controlled, since hundreds of new vehicles are hitting the roads every day. They observe that there is little coordination among the implementation authorities, which deal with the city traffic. Although the communications ministry is the highest authority to look after the city traffic, it has not taken any mentionable steps so far.

A study conducted by one of the country's leading chamber bodies revealed recently that some Tk 200 billion is lost every year in traffic jams due to the valuable time-loss in the maze of gridlocks in the Dhaka streets. It said that traffic jam is responsible for taking away 8.15 million working hours, 40 per cent of which are business hours. Tk 20 billion is lost due to 3.2 million business hours' wasted in congestion.

Urban planners and communication experts have identified multi-dimensional causes of traffic jams in Dhaka city. These include: rapid and unplanned urbanisation, high population rate, high rate of increase of vehicles, plying of different speeding vehicles on the same surface, unauthorised parking, illegal occupation of roads, non-compliance with traffic rules, lack of traffic rule enforcement, absence of coordination among different agencies and ministries for managing city traffic, reckless driving and frequent changes of policies. Even the existing footpaths, foot-bridges and under-passes are occupied by encroachers, beggars and hawkers.

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 sychronised signal system, the traffic police are still seen controlling traffic at busy intersections manually. Under such system, if a vehicle gets green signal at one point, it indicates that it will get the same signal in every intersection. But in reality, this is not happening. Implementation of such a system is challenging for a mega city like Dhaka where motorised vehicles of varying speeds and shapes and many non-motorised vehicles ply the same roads. Besides, the traffic police provide passages to the vehicles carrying VIPs interrupting the signals, which also causes huge traffic gridlocks.

The government is to largely blame for much of the chaos. It allowed setting up of universities, commercial establishments, garment factories, schools, clinics and wholesale kitchen markets at busy areas or close to residential localities. This has created a chaotic situation for which the city suffers. Posh shopping malls cause traffic jams on important city roads. Panthapath and Sonargaon intersections speak of it. Shoppers love to park their vehicles on the street instead of the mall parking lots which often are left vacant.

In order to address the issue of haphazard parking of vehicles which is one of the major contributors to traffic jam on many of the city thoroughfares, more multistoried parking lots need to be built with concerted efforts by the government and the private sector, and conditions will also require to be created to run them on commercial basis. This will help ease traffic congestion to a considerable extent. Urgent attention should also be given to effectively control 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 strict enforcement to bring an end to random stopping along busy streets blocking smooth passage of other vehicles.

Indeed, a series of urgent measures need to be taken to bring sanity on the roads which are long overdue. The existing city roads need to be made wider and new roads constructed so that commuters may have choices for alternative roads to reach destinations in any given direction. Better and integrated traffic control system -- good road signs, easily visible and properly timed traffic signals, creating more one way streets etc -- needs to be put in place immediately. Traffic regulations should be strictly enforced by well-trained and closely supervised traffic police.

To make a system work, it requires collective wisdom and the habit of following the rules and regulations. It does not matter how much fund the government provides and how modern system and equipment it introduces. Yet things will continue to be in a deplorable state, if the commuters and the authorities remain reluctant to make it work.

szkhan@dhaka.net

Source: Thefinancialexpress