Traffic management in urban areas of the country in general and Dhaka in particular has long been a subject of widespread as well as intense public criticism. Citizens suffer inordinate delays every time they step onto the road - to go to their place of work or to the market or to educational institutions or to a health care centre. This is beginning to assume critical dimensions.
The other day, I had to travel to Baridhara from my residence in Dhanmondi - a distance of about nine miles. It took me one hour and fifty minutes to get there. It took another one hour and forty six minutes to get back. It normally takes about forty to fifty minutes to traverse a distance of about one and half miles. Travelling on the streets of Dhaka is a sheer waste of time. Besides, those who travel by car feel guilty of causing collateral suffering to the pedestrians because of the prevalence of noxious fumes emanating from stranded vehicles. This is particularly true of children while they walk down to their educational institutions and back.
This extraordinary delay in traffic movement is largely due to poor traffic management. One fails to understand why automatic, electric traffic signals put in place at inter-sections are rarely in functional use. Why are traffic lights, powered by solar panels, found to be non-functional?
One cannot find any logic in the arbitrary methods law-enforcement personnel use while controlling traffic moving towards different directions at an intersection of road. The persistent delays created at junctions like the Bijoy Sarani, Farm Gate, Sonargaon Hotel and the PG Hospital deserve special attention. At these points the situation is further compounded with pedestrians jaywalking and avoiding the crossing of roads through over-bridges. Occasional attempts by law-enforcement personnel to bring discipline in this respect made no tangible impact.
After this comes the question of discipline and vehicles moving within designated lane sections. This just does not happen. Consequently one can have a situation where a busy communication link like the Mirpur Road can be a total fiasco.
Most of the time, day and night, slow moving vehicles like rickshaws, rickshaw vans, push carts block the road or compete for space with buses, trucks, vans and cars. To this one may add, auto-rickshaws and motor cycles cross lanes with impunity.
One fails to understand why police officials cannot strictly enforce existing regulations and discipline pertaining to movement of slow moving vehicles at different fixed times of the day, particularly between 9-00 am and 6-00 pm (during office hours) and also in the evening until 8-00 pm. This would greatly reduce the traffic crisis near the New Market and Nilkhet junctions.
We also have another facet that generates unnecessary complexity. A two-way road with three potential lanes on either side, quite often ends up as five to six lanes on either side of the road. This paradigm becomes complicated because the additional lanes that are created arbitrarily are then taken over by vehicles which weave in and out of lanes according to their whim. To this is added buses stopping suddenly (not in designated bus stops) in the middle of the road for disembarking passengers and to pick up additional passengers in total disregard of flowing traffic. This creates danger of collisions and also of accidents where passengers might be affected. CCTV cameras installed on roads should be used for identifying buses which do not stop at designated points for necessary legal action.
In this context, mention may be made of the good work done recently by the police force in penalising vehicles, including some belonging to important government officials, for travelling on the wrong side of the road. Everyone welcomed this measure. Bu the move has been discontinued. That was unfortunate.
Dhaka, in particular, with its more than 17 million inhabitants, has probably become the worst example of traffic management in the whole of South Asia, if not the whole of Asia. This has happened despite the government having taken pro-active steps to improve the situation of traffic flow by constructing many flyovers. The facilitation process is unfortunately hampered at the exit points when vehicles are held up for up to twenty minutes before they can come down from the flyover and cross the intersection to merge into desired traffic lanes. In Belgium and some parts of France and Germany they use a clever method to solve this situation. Cars coming down from flyovers and wanting to proceed straight on do so by a passage way built underneath the intersection. Cars come in and re-surface on the other side without having to stop for traffic going straight from either direction - left or right.
One US-based organization, consisting of traffic experts, recently carried out a survey about traffic conditions in Dhaka. They found out that apparently only about 6.0 to 8.0 per cent of the commuters in this city use private transports (cars and auto-rickshaws) to reach their destination. They however occupy nearly 65 per cent of the road space. Public transports, on the other hand, use about 10 per cent of the road space, but carry about 60 per cent of the commuters.
The glut of traffic on our roads assume a complex matrix also because the available road space is occupied more often than not, by cars parking themselves in irregular fashion on sides of roads not meant for parking of vehicles. Such encroachment narrows the space available for movement of transport. This situation is further exacerbated through the creation of illegal shops on pavements (thereby obstructing pathway of pedestrians) and also on the sides of the road itself. Such impediments continue because of negligence on the part of the monitoring authorities. Some attribute this to corruption and use of influence by local political leaders. This needs to stop. We have seen how serious efforts were made in the recent past to free the pavements near the Dhaka Stadium and Baitul Mukarram Mosque. Unfortunately, the good results resulting from these operations lasted only for a few days.
One cannot also overlook another important factor that contributes to traffic management problems. It relates to the distressing conditions of some of our city roads - particularly the drainage system. In the recent past we have witnessed how showers have resulted in water-logging and debacles in the streets. A glaring example is the situation that emerged in the junction point between Road 27 of Dhanmondi and the Mirpur Road. Both the Dhaka South City Corporation and the North City Corporation have worked together to redress the situation. Things are much better now. The situation in Gulshan and Banani has also improved. This, in turn, has improved traffic management in those areas.
There is apparently necessary political will to solve the existing traffic problems. The introduction of metro rail and better public transport vehicles will facilitate more commuters using these options. It will also reduce the use of private transport and unclog traffic jams. We have to wait a few more years, but it will be worth the wait.
The writer, a former Ambassador and Chief Information Commissioner of the Information Commission, is an analyst specialised in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance.
