Dhaka wears signature feature of traffic jam

Syed Shemul Parvez :
City dwellers are passing miserable lives daily due to intolerable traffic jams despite plethora of infrastructural development including commissioning of flyovers, Elevated Expressway and Metrorail.

Nevertheless this huge investment and development, Dhaka is now the slowest city in the world.

As a result, dwellers are seriously fed up with heavy traffic jams as the daily life has come to a standstill.

At present, the traffic jam is not only problem for the big cities like Dhaka and Chattogram, but also other small cities are also gradually becoming more and more affected by traffic congestion.

Experts said the traffic gridlock is becoming increasingly widespread due to unplanned urbanisation, a poor traffic system, enormous unregistered vehicles as well as various road development projects underway.

Vehicles are parked on the roadside in different areas of the city causing severe traffic jams. And the sidewalk is occupied by hawkers which also one of the reasons of jam, experts added.

On Wednesday, it was seen on the spot that a number of office-goers, students, and guardians of schoolchildren were get stuck in different traffic jams in the capital.

Severe traffic jams were found as hundreds of vehicles, mostly passenger buses, private cars and motorbikes were seen stuck for hours on different busy roads and thoroughfares, including Asadgate, Firmgate, Kawranbazar, Sahabagh, Purana-Paltan, Gulistan, Motijheel Malibagh, Moghbazar, , Tejgaon, Mirpur, Gulshan and Banani on the day.

Sahin Ahmed, a service holder and resident of Mohammadpur area in the capital, expressed his dissatisfaction to The New Nation saying that the major problem of the capital is the traffic jam.

Many jobholders and students are late to reach their destinations due to traffic jam. Valuable time of commuters is wasted due to the traffic jams in the overcrowded capital daily, he said.

Another agitated office-goers told The New Nation that severe traffic congestion is creating almost every day due to a VVIP movement in the capital.

According to a survey conducted by the non-governmental development organization Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD), the traffic congestion in the capital is getting worse day by day.

Capital residents lose an average of 46 minutes in a 2-hour journey due to traffic jams. And an average of 276 hours a year are wasted in traffic.

As a result, fuel is being burned, time is being wasted. At the same time productivity is lost. Every resident of this mega city has to spend around 11 days of the year in traffic jam.

A research report presented at an annual conference of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies in December 2021 said that the woeful traffic jam in Dhaka is not only causing human suffering and working hours loss; it is also affecting GDP and per capita income.

Due to traffic gridlock in Dhaka only, the annual loss is 2.9 per cent of the GDP. As of the new base year of 2015-16, this loss in monetary value is Tk 1,01,036 crore.

Meanwhile, according to a study by the Accident and Research Institute of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, the financial value of the working hours lost every day due to traffic congestion is about Tk 140 crore.

In 2022, more than 8 million working hours were lost on Dhaka roads every day, compared to 5 million working hours a day in 2017.

According to the study, about two and a half million trips are made daily in short- and long-distance vehicles in Dhaka, of which 44 per cent are office going passengers.

Over the past few years, the number of privately owned vehicles has increased significantly, resulting in increased traffic congestion. The number of private cars and motorcycles has increased tremendously.

Another study, commissioned by BRAC Institute of Government and Development, says traffic congestion in Dhaka eats up around 5 million working hours every day and costs the country USD 11.4 billion every year.

The financial loss is a calculation of the cost of time lost in traffic congestion and the money spent on operating vehicles for the extra hours.

Besides, Dhaka is the slowest city in the world. The information that emerged from a study of the average speed of motor vehicles in more than 1,200 cities in 152 countries.

The study was conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Massachusetts, USA.