SM Mizanur Rahman :
Metropolis Dhaka is almost immovable now with traffic congestion causing gridlocks of hundreds of vehicles in the streets at a time holding commuters hostage on their way to office or back home through agonizing hours.
This is a city where most people now waste five to six hours for a journey to city center at Motijheel from Mirpur or Uttara and such other places. They lose their energy and productivity on the way in sweltering heat traveling in public transport Car drivers wait in helpless hours together to reach office and this is almost the daily scenario, except the week-end, without remedial action by city traffic officials or newly elected city mayors who had vowed to end the crisis forthwith on their election.
There may be many reasons for it but the most noticeable is the incompetent traffic management in the city to handle the huge jam on the roads and inefficient planning of city streets; which are not wide enough and has no easy exit from gridlocks using bypass lanes.Dhaka is a major city in the region and tied to many metropolises in Asia, Europe and the Noth America. But when its traffic management comes at the center it looks like an abandoned city to traffic jams.
Many wonders why the city government does not invite people of big international cities to Dhaka so that they can see the traffic jam here and make valuable advice.
But advice is not absent; action is absent with accompanied honesty and commitment to eradicate the jam with quick implementation of some big city transport projects. In many cases, they are only planning and looking for third party contacts to beef up wealth from under hand deals. So no big projects like metro railways is making progress.
They are yet to learn about city tunnels, least to speak about underground tube. Unless mass transport system has been put in place in Dhaka, the present streets are not enough to avoid congestion.
Traffic police said they are indeed unable to handle the problem with their present capacity and logistic support in the prevailing political system where the rule of law is subservient to the whims of the powerful people.
Instead of working to improve the situation many of them now drive in the wrong side using empty streets when congestion is blocking the right way to drive.
“We don’t have anything to do. It is not possible to apply the traffic rule to ask for compliance. The situation is deteriorating every time, a senior traffic official of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told The New Nation on Thursday asking for anonymity.
During the peak hour, traffic movement remains almost to a halt from city’s Abdullahpur, Uttara, Airport, and Khilkhet in the North to Kuril, Bashundhara Residential area, Gulshan Baridhara in North-East.
Again from Gabtoli to Sayedabad and Kamlapur to Mohakhali, every roads and lanes become infested with immobile vehicles while traffic police keep on waiting without much to ease the situation.
The city traffic official said when one section of administration say start checking unfit vehicles in the streets to reduce congestion, another say don’t do it or stop it if it is already started. It aims at protecting private bus owners as most of them are plying unfit vehicles in city streets.
Similar controversy put in failure any move to clan city footpaths. One party vacates the footpaths and the other party overlook when they return. So long city footpaths would remain blocked to pedestrians and people would walk through the city streets, it will remain a major cause of congestion at many city points.
“I can confidently say no government would be able to evict the hawkers from the footpath. I don’t want to go for details,” he said suggesting the nexus between police and musclemen to allow the hawkers to business on payment of daily rent.
The traffic official said he went to meet the newly elected Mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation recently to discuss how traffic congestion can be reduced during Ramadan towards Eid festival. But he was unable to meet him
The question is if city government does not take traffic issues seriously, no one can hope of any improvement soon.
Some 74 operators are plying passenger buses from Mirpur to city centers and other destinations. Buses from 40 routes cross Shapla Chatter from different direction towards Saidabad. These roads are not enough to handle the load.
It partly explains why Shapla Chattar and Motijheel are so overcrowded at peak hours of the day down to late evening.
