As a standard practice, public buses have to pick up and drop passengers at specified bus stops and nowhere else. The practice in Dhaka is just the opposite. Passengers can get down almost anywhere they want and buses can also pick up passengers at any point. These 'hail and ride' stops make the whole traffic flow risky and undisciplined.
Specified bus stops on road sides are essential for smooth public transports. Commuters need these stops to safely get off and get on board buses. While bus bays are ideal to serve as bus stops, in most of the cases it is not possible due to lack of adequate space. Nevertheless, a specified part of a road and its adjoined footpath are used as a bus stop. Passengers wait on footpath while buses halt close by to pick them up and also drop others. But this view is rare in Dhaka which reflects a terrible mismanagement of road traffic.
Not that there is no specified bus stop in the capital city. A good number of spots serve as bus stops and mostly without any basic infrastructure like stop signs and information on buses. Rather, these stops are always chaotic. While approaching to a stop, helpers of buses start to shout at on board passengers to get off and waiting passengers to get on. In many cases passengers are forced to get down from running buses. More risky is picking up passengers without buses coming to a halt. Lack of adequate buses sometimes compel passengers to jostle and buses collide with each other especially in peak hours.
Arrival of buses of common and different routes at a stop at a time leads to an anarchic situation. To get their own rooms in limited spaces, drivers squeeze past each other. As a result, commuters have to risk their lives to get off or get on. Many a time passengers narrowly escape accidents while trying to move between buses. If drivers maintain cues and place buses orderly, there will be no chaos and risk of accidents will also be eliminated.
Another problem is hyperactivity of traffic polices to keep roads, mostly the intersections, free from congestions. They care little about commuters and in many times don't allow buses to halt in specified stops. So buses drop off passengers in the middle of roads. Even this happens in under nose of the traffic police who usually overlook the unruliness unless there are so-called VIP movements.
Picking up and dropping of commuters in the middle of roads as well as anywhere turn the entire length of a road into bus stops. Unruliness of both commuters and drivers coupled with faulty design of roads makes the matter even worse.
