Total mess

Anisul Islam Noor :
Traffic system in the capital city Dhaka has totally collapsed causing immense suffering to commuters during hot summer day. At present, both the automatic and manual signaling systems in the city are not working at all.
Thousand of buses and private cars spent hour after hour on the street being locked in the traffic gridlock. Even, the ambulances with emergency patients can hardly make way.
Traffic was nearly paralysed in Farmgate, Shahbagh, Paltan, Motijheel, Mohakhali, Gulshan, Banani, Dhanmondi, Rampura and Uttara areas during the morning rush hour when people were bound for office. The scenario was all the same in the evening when they were returning.
The suffering of people intensified more due to humid summer temperature. The women, elderly people and children have to pass time on road in an unbearable misery for the slow traffic. “Generally, it takes about one hour to reach Gulshan and Baridhara from Paltan by CNG-run auto rickshaw. And normally, it takes two hours to reach Uttara from Dhanmondi, but now it takes more than four hours, most of us are now spending time sitting still in the vehicle,” Dilruba Akter, a teacher, said.
Alauddin Siddik, a section officer of Jagannath University, said: “I regularly travel to the university from Mirpur in an hour and a half, but now it takes two and a half hours. Its dreadful!”
After closing down the digital system, the traffic police are reverting to manual traffic management and trying to bring the flow of traffic to normal.
Officials of both Dhaka North City Corporation and Dhaka South City Corporation said they had installed the automatic signalling system with solar panels at 62 intersections across the city, but only started operating it at 24 intersections from Shahbagh to Kakoli on trial basis from last Friday.
Contacted, Project Director of Clean Air Sustainable Environment (CASE) of Dhaka City Corporations Shihab Ullah confirmed that the automatic signalling systems at 12 intersections were running on test basis following consultations with the Traffic Department of DMP from last Friday.
‘All of the modern cities of the world, except Dhaka City, have automatic signalling system. Collectively, we will improve the signalling system after consulting with all other stakeholders,’ Shihab said.
Commuters said, the automated system and the movement of VIPs and VVIPs – both of which brought traffic to a standstill – added to their woes.
“Illegal occupation of roads and road-sides by the makeshift shops and hawkers has reduced the road spaces and add to the problem of severe traffic congestion in the month of Ramzan,” a high official of DMP told The New Nation on Monday.
He said, “At present, more than 30 per cent of road has been illegally occupied by the hawkers, salesmen and shopkeepers. Besides, haphazard parking has been drastically reducing the road space and restricting the movement of vehicles. The pedestrians also use roads due to lack of spacious footpaths that increase the problem of congestion.
DMP traffic department sources said the Tk 25 crore “Dhaka Urban Transport” project financed by the World Bank in 2005 established signal lights at 69 points on 59 streets of the capital. The project work ended in November 2009. A massive campaign was launched at the time to create awareness about traffic signals and mobile courts were deployed to punish violators. But all went in vain!