Five million man-hours are lost daily and the country counts a yearly economic loss of up to Tk 555 billion (Tk 55,500 crore) due to Dhaka's worsening gridlock where traffic speed is reduced to five kilometre per hour at rush hours.
But putting a proper traffic management in place can still lessen such damage up to 60 per cent.
A recent study revealed this at a roundtable on ‘Dhaka's traffic jam’ at Buet Accident Research Institute (ARI) on Saturday. Dr Moazzem Hossain, a Professor of Civil Engineering Department of Buet and Director of ARI, presented the research findings.
He said currently the city has at least 6,000 buses for commuters whereas, the professor claimed that 2,500 buses would be suffice to cater the service with a proper planning and monitoring in place.
He reckoned that the main problem lies in limited number of arterials, manual traffic signal operation, bottleneck like signal junctions, high-rise commercials complexes and markets beside arterials without sufficient driveways, illegal occupation of roads and footpaths and plying of different modes of transports with varying speed capacities on same lanes.
Dr Moazzem said the mismanagement of Dhaka road results a great deal of economic damage and psychical and mental health impact.
Apart from the lost work hours and economic loses, a great number of road accidents occurred in Dhaka city due to the transportation mismanagement.
The professor showed, on the basis of a research finding of Dhaka Urban Transport network Development Study, 2010, at least 74 per cent of road accidents occurred at Dhaka Metropolitan City comparing to other major cities in Bangladesh.
He said the transportation system can be disciplined by creating separate lanes for different vehicles, especially for bus, freeing footpaths for pedestrians and ensuring parking-free roads, no-stopping zones for busy areas, building some parking zones for buses and cars and so one.
By properly managing the Dhaka's transportation system, economic loss can be reduced by nearly 60 per cent, he said.
Deputy Director of Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defence Debasish Bardhan said fire service members have to face difficulty to response and rescue operations quickly in Dhaka due to traffic gridlock.
He said, in 2017, they rescued 11,000 people from different accidents in which at least 2,500 died on the way to hospital mainly for traffic jam in Fire Brigade's Dhaka Division command area.
Professor Sarwar Jahan of Urban and Regional Planning Department of Buet said most of the cases, it seemed that the policies are made operational without thinking their consequences.
He expressed doubt that lots of flyovers and metro rails will not see much of a success without properly managing the city's existing transportation systems.
Professor MM Akash of Economics Department of Dhaka University said decentralisation can be the best solution for the urban problems because over density of population is responsible for failing to provide quality services.
He said some initiatives that had showed at research presentation can temporally minimise the problem but if people continue to come to capital, in near future the whole system will go beyond control.
Several others, including Dr Farah Deeba of Clinical Psychology Department of Dhaka University and Dr Muhammad Siraz-Ul-Islam addressed the programme. The function was conducted by Barrister Jyotirmoy Barua with Dr AI Mahbub Uddin Ahmed, Professor of Sociology Department of Dhaka University and Chairman of Road Safety Foundation, in the chair, reports UNB.
