Traffic problem in Bangladesh

Despite the construction of several flyovers, allowing people to park their vehicles on designated streets and bus stops, and stern action against wrong-side driving, traffic congestion in Dhaka continues to aggravate, causing serious sufferings to city commuters.

According to Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Traffic Department, traffic jam has become intolerable over the last few days in some city areas, including Mirpur-12 to Mirpur-10 crossing, Rokeya Sarani, Gulshan, Banani, Badda, Moghbazar, Eskaton, Tejgaon, Airport Road and Uttara, for many reasons, including the ongoing Dhaka International Trade Fair, metro rail construction work and rise in private vehicles of ride-sharing companies.

Transport and urban experts think the government should take pragmatic steps to ensure sufficient mass transport, restore discipline in the transport sector, reduce the use of private and small vehicles, replace the microbuses and minibuses with single-decker, double-decker and articulated buses and expand the city to significantly ease the traffic jam without spending huge money.

The experts also said the railways and waterways can also be used effectively to ease traffic pressure on roads and facilitate the commuters hassle-free transportation services.

Dr Mohammad Shamsul Hoque, a professor of Civil Engineering Department at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), told UNB that many big projects have been implemented in the city whimsically without consultation with experts to ease traffic jams, and all those now turned out to be ineffective.

“The way we are destroying the city with unjustified projects based on hypothesis, I am in doubt whether the traffic will be manageable here after 10 years. We’ve done many things like building flyover, unnecessarily expending thousands crore of taka over the last 20 years, but we did not do what were crucial for us,” he said.

Hoque, also a noted transport expert, said the government can ease traffic jam significantly in the city with some low-cost projects and sincere initiatives and actions in the light of the Strategic Transport Plan (STP) revised in 2015.