The government is toying with an idea to develop an expressway network across the country to establish uninterrupted and speedy connectivity from one corridor to another.
The idea is to match with the seven per cent economic growth.
Officials said state-run Roads and Highways Department (RHD) with support from Public-Private Partnership Authority (PPPA) has already prepared groundwork for identifying routes, considering the potential increase in traffic movement and industrial and agricultural development.
The step is to facilitate transportation of goods and people through the access control highway as the number of transports is likely to increase with the growth in economic expansion in different localities.
"We need to start developing expressway backbone in the country from now to match with the need of transportation of goods and people of different areas of the country," chief engineer of the department Ebne Alam Hasan said.
He said more than 30 routes have initially been identified based on 10 to 12 criteria.
At present, the department has no expressway in real sense in its more than 21,000 kilometre network developed by it.
But the highway and regional corridor developer has already developed a project to establish an expressway between the capital and the Chittagong port city considering importance of the corridor in the economy.
This project is expected to be financed under public-private partnership (PPP).
The department, however, said the Dhaka-Mawa and Joydevpur-Elenga roads, which are now under construction, are being developed with the concept of expressway.
But both projects were conceived to be four-lane corridor.
Under various construction stages, the state-owned highway developer changed the road design to find out local level solution including crossing, locality connectivity, etc, which eventually helped the RHD to claim the roads expressways.
Transport expert Professor Shamsul Hoque said the country needs good road infrastructure to match with the economic growth of the country for ensuring the safest and fully-productive quality road.
He said the plan to develop expressway network will be help in this connection.
"Globally, road infrastructure has been developed with the concept of 'star' as are the cases of hotels. Super highway, freeway, motorway, expressway, etc are developed to match with the need of the economy," he told the FE.
Syed Afsor H Uddin, chief executive officer of PPP Authority, said the state agency is engaged with the RHD in developing the national expressway highways for facilitating the investment concept for the development of the network.
"We want to be ready to facilitate expressway project development promoting the concept of PPP," he told the FE recently.
He said to develop expressway projects, RHD needs to acquire skills and knowledge in designing financial models.
The department has recently proposed the government to set up a special wing dedicated to regional connectivity to develop the expressway projects.
Both agencies have already held several brainstorming sessions with stakeholders including the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology to shape the expressway network.
