This picture indicates that around 80 percent of the city dwellers use either buses or rickshaws and they are worst sufferers from congestion in city roads. Dhaka is a large city not only with its huge population but by area, which increased manifolds over the past years. So, city dwellers have to travel a longer way every day to reach their work place and come home back. For acute traffic congestion not only business hours are lost, at the same time it create adverse effect to human health. The research output has made clear how much time regularly being killed every day by every individual due to traffic congestion. The figure is terribly big and loss is high due to poor management of our city transport system. But there is hardly any credible system at work to count the loss of energy and loss of working ability and its cost. The human cost remains unaccounted but felt and partly measured by medical cost. A holistic system can produce total loss to the economy much more than the finding of RSTP.
We cannot deny the fact that the main cause of traffic congestion in the capital is gross indiscipline. Traffic police responsible to manage the traffic system is not properly organized and disciplined. They are not enough in number and over-loaded with duty. At the same time they are poorly paid. So they perform their duty in a reluctant mood.
But the biggest problem is that our city streets are not enough wide to allow several vehicles run at a time. Moreover the overcrowded city needs mass transport system, which can be using underground railway or elevated express way. A big city can’t go without mass transport system, which is still far away. So waste of energy, working hours and fuel will continue to add to the suffering of the people and we don’t know whether it can be counted as part of government big achievements. We have to cut such loss to the economy in shortest possible time.
