Staff Reporter :Heavy traffic jam choked most of the major streets in the capital city Dhaka on Monday much to the discomfort of the commuters where hundreds of people were seen waiting frustrated due to slow movement of transport on the first weekly working day.Most of the city areas, including Motijheel, Naya Paltan, Purana Paltan, Bijoy Nagar, Dilkusha, Shahbagh, Kakrail, Saidabad, Jatrabari, Firmgate, Mohakhali, Banani, Airport and Uttara were virtually paralysed from early morning. “I started for Jamuna Future Park from Katabon at 1:00pm and reached my destination at 3:30pm. Usually, it’s an hour long journey, but it took two and a half hours due to gridlock,” Md Sohel Rahman, an official of a private bank, said.Sumona Rahman, teacher of a city kinder garten, said it took more than three hours to reach Uttara from her Kakrail workplace due to ‘unbearable traffic jam’. Officials of Traffic Department of Dhaka Metropolitan Police [DMP], however, blamed introduction of digital traffic system’ for the severe traffic chaos on the city roads. The traffic system fully collapsed when DMP went to introduce digital methods instead of traditional traffic arrangement, said Khan Mohammad Redwan, Deputy Commission [Traffic] of DMP. Besides, the movements of VVIP for attending weekly cabinet meeting at Secretariat also intensified the sufferings as some of the important thoroughfares remained closed at that time, he said.DMP sources said, the traffic department on Friday experimentally introduced ‘digital signal light system’. The Dhaka North and South City Corporations with the cooperation of DMP Traffic Department started work to implement the project titled: CASS [clean air and sustainable environment].The DMP Traffic Department at last postponed the programme and re-introduced the old methods with manual signals by the traffic constables. 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.
