Sagar Biswas :
Scarcity of public transport following crackdown on unfit vehicles by the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority [BRTA] and continuous transport jam on different important city roads have intensified sufferings of dwellers at highest extent.
The week-long BRTA drive already forced a good number of city-route buses to go into hide. The people were seen franticly looking for a transport on Thursday, the last weekly working day, at different city points.
Of them, the students of kindergartens and primary schools suffered a lot as most of them were trapped when they started for home after the class at noon.
In fact, the major portion of the city was locked in traffic jam due to two big showdowns at Shahbagh and Bijoy Nagar, one by the private university students and another by medical students respectively.
Its impact was also severe. Each and every road of the city had to bear the brunt of the blockade that continued till late afternoon.
“I had started for Motijheel from Uttara at 3:00pm and reached my destination at 6:30pm. Usually, it’s a one hour journey, but it took three and half an hour due to gridlock,” Md Abdul Halim, a ready-made-garment businessman, said.
Ratna Barua, teacher of a city kindergarten, said it took more than two and half an hour to reach Mirpur from her Kakrail workplace due to ‘unbearable traffic jam’.
Officials said BRTA along with Dhaka Metropolitan Police [DMP] yesterday conducted several drives against unfit vehicles, including buses, in different areas of the capital. Many owners kept their both unfit and fit buses in garages leading to artificial shortage of public transport on city roads to suffer the people immensely.
Most of the city parts, including Motijheel, Naya Paltan, Purana Paltan, Bijoy Nagar, Dilkusha, Shahbagh, Kakrail, Saidabad, Jatrabari, Farmgate, Mohakhali, Banani, Airport, Mirpur and Uttara were virtually paralysed where commuters had to wait for hours at each and every signal.
“All our achievements are going in vain due to intolerable traffic jam. I can’t think myself a successful one until and unless the traffic jam comes to an end completely,” Obaidul Quader, Road Transport and Bridges Minister, said yesterday.
Announcing fresh war against unfit vehicles, he said, “We have directed the BRTA to remain cautious before issuing license to the drivers and registration to vehicles in the future. In the meantime, the number of accidents has been reduced following the ban on three wheelers and other manual vehicles.”
Experts said, tens of thousands of motorised and manual vehicles now operate on only 250 km long arteries of Dhaka’s 2,200km roads.
Whereas the minimum road requirement is 25 per cent of the whole city, Dhaka has only 7.5 per cent road space. As a result, over a million vehicles do not get sufficient space to move, they added.
Though the government has taken various plans and projects in a bid to get rid of the ever-biggest problem in city-life, unplanned road network and imbalanced vehicle composition have resulted in a complex road system where vehicles face all ill-effects of frequent bottlenecks near junction, according to experts.
