Transport System

The urban hierarchy of Bangladesh is strongly dominated by Metropolitan Dhaka, which is the country’s largest, and most industrialized city and also its administrative, commercial and cultural capital. The population of Dhaka is about 10 million presently and is projected to be about 18.5 million by 2015, making it the seventh largest mega city in the world. Current average annual growth rate of population is 4.81% and Dhaka contributes about 13% of the national GDP. Dhaka also serves as the traditional center of wholesale trade for the country. In spite of its relative importance in the national economy, acute deficiencies exist in the provision of infrastructure facilities, resulting in a widening gap between supply and demand for urban transport services.

Dhaka City was established on the bank of the river Buriganga and at that period a river-based economy controlled the city dwellers. From that time, the city grew only at one side of the river, mostly towards north. After the independence of Pakistan, Dhaka City was declared as the provincial capital of East Pakistan. The river was dying gradually while the land communication from Dhaka to the other parts of the country was improving. Dhaka city exploited the following factors and used them to their advantage: Dhaka’s historical background, fine climatic condition, advantages of being a capital city, better quality of life comparing to other cities, better job opportunities and skilled man power. Especially after the independence of Bangladesh, the growth of this city never went down. Although Dhaka City’s area is less than one percent of the country’s total land area, it supports about 7.2 percent of the total population of the country.


Transport Environment in Dhaka

The transport environment in Dhaka is characterized by different types of modes, both Motorized Transports (MT) & Non motorized Transports (NMT), using the same road space, traffic congestion, delays, inadequate traffic management, conflict of jurisdictions, poor coordination among organizations and increasing air pollution problems. Dhaka is perhaps the only city of its size without a well-organized, properly scheduled bus system or any other mass transport system. Women and urban poor are particularly disadvantaged in accessing the existing facilities due to extreme overcrowding. The city’s traffic problems have reached a crisis proportion (delays have tripled in the last three years and automobile-related air pollution has become a major health problem) such that these shortcomings seriously compromise the ability of the transport sector in DMA to sustain economic growth and reasonable quality of life. Deteriorating traffic conditions have prompted several popular public campaigns to find urgent solutions. Moreover, the expected addition of another seven million people over the next 16-17 years will make conditions even more difficult in the future unless urgent measures are taken to address the situation.

In many respects, the distribution of modal choices in Dhaka is unique among cities of comparable size in the Asia region. Almost 60% of the 8.5 million weekday person trips are walk trips and about 19.2% use rickshaw (tri cycle). For the remaining 20% trips on motorized modes, 1.4% use auto-rickshaw (three wheeler), 9.2% travel by bus, 3.1% by private car, and the other 6.7% by various other modes. In terms of passenger km, the share of buses is 30.6% and those of rickshaw (tri-cycle) and walking are 21.7% and 17.7% respectively. The high dependence on walking and rickshaw, both slow and typically best suited for short trips on secondary roads, and a low dependence on buses, in a city of nine million people with an urban area of about 2,000 square km, is a symptom of inefficient and ineffective transport operations as well as un controlled land-use. The friction and conflict arising from mixed modes of traffic, both motorized and non-motorized (slow and fast modes) competing for and occupying the same road space is acute.

Besides, DMA has unique potential for waterways development due to surrounding rivers and waterways in the metropolitan area. There is also city railway terminal and it links with the suburban towns.

Traffic Congestion is one of many serious global problems in both developed and undeveloped countries. Dhaka City, the capital of Bangladesh and an area experiencing rapid population expansion and traffic congestion.

The intolerable traffic congestion of Dhaka City has become an everyday certainty and a nightmare for the city dwellers. It can be easily concluded that Dhaka has marched into the 21st century as an over-populated, over-congested and over-polluted city. Years of negligence, mismanagement, improper planning and political instability have led Dhaka to this present predicament.

Either it is in New York City or Bombay or Dhaka, traffic congestion always poses negative externality upon the society. It poses severe threat to the economy as well as to the environment. In 1997, the annual country wise Economic Wastage occasioned by Traffic Congestion was $75 million. Since Dhaka City has large share of the total vehicles of the whole country, we can say that most of this congestion occurred in Dhaka. And now, in the year of 2000, the wastage will be definitely higher; because the vehicles of this city, not the roads, are increasing significantly each year.

Bangladesh is one of the top ten poorest countries of the world. The capital city Dhaka can not afford the economic and environmental loss resulted from this severe Traffic Congestion.

VEHICLES OF DHAKA CITY

Dhaka City has several types of vehicles. Income-wise the use of different transports is as follows:

Higher Income Group: Car, Taxi Service, Micro Bus and other private vehicles

Middle Income Group: Rickshaw, Auto Rickshaw, Bicycle, Motor Cycle, Carriage, Car, Bus, Minibus

Lower Income Group: Bus and Tempo

Goods Delivery: Truck, Pick up, Van, Human Driven Van

The trip distribution of Dhaka City is very much different from the other similar cities of Asia. Almost 66% of the total trip distribution is on foot, 11% is on Rickshaw and the rest 23% is others.

Table 1: DIFFERENT SECTORS OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION OF DHAKA CITY

In 1998, rickshaws were the 38% of the total vehicles of the whole city. In 1999, there are 79619 Licensed Rickshaws in Dhaka. Till March 2000, this number has increased up to 88000. At present Dhaka has about 350,000 rickshaws, most of which are unauthorized.

REGISTERED IN BANGLADESH (PER YEAR) (Source: BRTA)

The number of public transports, especially the buses, is very low comparing to rickshaws or other vehicles.

The principal problems / issues associated with transport services in DMA are

(a) weak institutional arrangements for planning, coordination, enforcement and management of transport services leading to inefficiency, overlapping jurisdictions and inadequate inter-agency planning and coordination;
(b) absence of good Mass Transit System in the city.
(c) Lack of integration of different modes in the city.
(d) Absence of appropriate land use in the city.
(e) tariff regulations and other disincentives that discourage large investments by the private sector resulting only few private individual ownership but not as big bus Company;
(f) inadequate traffic management and inefficient road use because of poor enforcement of traffic regulations, encroachments by street vendors and storage of building materials on the carriage way, conflict between slow and fast moving modes, and lack of coordination among different utility organizations and the road maintenance organization;
(g) absence of good pedestrian facilities such as, clear sidewalks, foot bridges for pedestrian crossings etc;
(h) high accident rates arising from inadequate traffic enforcement, poor road conditions, poor training & driving standards and lack of facilities for pedestrians;
(i) poor accessibility for women to the existing bus services due to overcrowding, inadequate sidewalks and pedestrian facilities which constrain poor women garment workers who walk to work in large numbers; and
(j) automobile-related air pollution due to congestion, old and badly maintained buses / trucks and quality of fuel.

CAUSES OF CONGESTION

It is very hard to tell about the causes of congestion in Dhaka as it does not follow any pattern. It is a common practice in Dhaka to blame rickshaws as the only reason for creating traffic congestion. But in reality there are several of reasons behind this problem. Effective reasons include:

• Significant increase in population and also all types of vehicles

• Simultaneous presence of motorized and non-motorized vehicles on the same street

• Traffic mismanagement: Violation of Traffic rules and regulations

• Poor transportation and infrastructure planning

• Other Issues

Significant increase in population and also in all types of vehicles

All of the major export oriented Industries, corporate offices, significant number of Export Promotion Zones, the head offices of almost all Multi National Companies, higher educational facilities and even the major International Airport of the country, all are located in or around the greater Dhaka city. Thus the city controls the economic development of the whole country. For these reasons, most of the rural-urban migration of Bangladesh is towards Dhaka City and it constitutes about 60% of Dhaka’s increasing population. Dhaka, at present, is one of the top most populous cities of the world. At present the greater Dhaka has about 10 million population. The city’s urbanization rate is one of the highest of the world and it is projected that by the year 2010, Dhaka will be the sixth largest city of the world with 18 million population.

The increasing population obviously increases the demand for more vehicles on the streets. Also they can easily provide the necessary labor force, especially for the informal sector [rickshaw pulling]. The more the traffic, the more will be the congestion, as the city has very limited infrastructure.

Simultaneous presence of motorized and non-motorized vehicles on the same street

In Dhaka City, both motorized and non-motorized vehicles occupy the same streets at the same time. Their speed is different and that is why it creates chaos and congestion on the street. Most of the rickshaw "pullers," or drivers, do not have any training and they are not even aware of the traffic rules.

Rickshaws have some positive points also. They are environment friendly vehicles. Some transport researchers of the western world are recently talking about Eco-friendly transportation trends. There are some cities like Paris, which have introduced rickshaws on their streets in the recent years because of its environment friendliness quality.

Another positive point is, rickshaw is economically very suitable for the middle income people, who can not afford to buy a car and also do not want to take a ride in a heavily congested bus. There is also a privacy factor. Bangladesh is a Muslim country and Muslim women usually prefer privacy. Rickshaw can give them this privacy along with the economic affordability.

Traffic Mismanagement

Insufficient number of traffic police and traffic signals, flaws in traffic markings, violation of traffic rules and regulations etc can also be cited as some of the main reasons for traffic congestion in this city. Some points are discussed here:

Violation of Traffic rules and regulations

There is a lack of education and consciousness among the citizenry about the traffic rules. People who come to the city from villages for employment, rickshaw pulling becomes the most easily available job for them. They do not need any formal training to start this profession. In most of the cases, they do not even take a legal license.

Most of the time, the pedestrians crosses the busy streets even if there is no crosswalk. People do not usually use the over bridges or underpasses, which are constructed in the important and busy intersections of the city.

The buses do not stop at the bus stops, they stop just at the intersection points, and rickshaws always follow them. As a result, the intersections of the busy roads always remain crowded by the people and different types of vehicles.

Improper Implementation of Traffic Rules

People usually do not want to follow the traffic rules, as there is no proper implementation of these rules. Even though traffic police is usually present at every nodes or intersections, they do not do their duties properly. Traffic rules are also very flexible. One can easily avoid the fine by giving bribe to the police.

The deployment of Military Police on Dhaka’s road shows that if traffic rules are properly enforced, people must obey it. We had this experience experimentally more than three or four times in the recent years.

Encroachment of roads and sidewalks

Street vendors, Hawkers and street front shop owners occupy above 60% of the 163-km footpaths of Dhaka City. The sidewalks are also filled up by construction materials, garbage or even temporary houses of homeless people or beggars. Very often pedestrians are forced to walk on the main roads instead of using the sidewalks because of these reasons.

Poor Transportation and Infrastructure Planning

Unplanned Growth of the City:

Dhaka City had its first Master Plan when it was a province of Pakistan in 1959. But besides 3 or 4 exceptions, nothing was implemented from that master plan because of the political instability. Later after the independence, there were couples of Structure Plans, 2 year to 5-year plans. But it is a very common incident that people and also the authority do not follow those plans always. New developments are always taking place in Dhaka City without any coherent road system. More than 3000 big and small shopping centers have mushroomed on the main roads from the last 8/10 years.

Lack of minimum required road structure and disproportionate road width comparing to the traffic load

Dhaka City has very inadequate road networks, which are only 8 or 10 percent of the total city area, whereas the acceptable ratio is 25 percent. Greater Dhaka has a total road network of approximately 2230km of which 25% are primary roads. The width of the roads varies from 6 to 40 m. The main roads are 15 to 25 m wide, newly built roads are 40 m wide while the roads in the older part of Dhaka are less than 6 m wide.

Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (DMDP) has shown that the road hierarchy of Dhaka City is incomplete and in some major developed areas there is no road hierarchy. Old Dhaka and some other places of the city have major access problems and it will likely worsen as development intensifies.

Improper and inadequate Public Transport System

One of the main problems of Dhaka City is its very limited Public Transport System. Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation [BRTC] is no more subsidized as it became private in 1993. Now, 90% of this corporation is in private sector and 10% in government sector. Before being privatized, the yearly loss of BRTC in the year 1991, ’92 and ’93, was almost Tk100000 – 200000 [US$ 1960 – 3920]. Now, in private sector the yearly turnover is Tk50000000 [US$ 980392].

There are three private companies, which are doing Transport (bus) business.

Metro Service – 115, Nirapod – 20, Nitol Motors – 2

They are doing profits, but there is no data on the amount of profit. There are now 1500 private buses (including BRTC bus) in Dhaka. But we need more than 4000 buses. BRTC wants to increase its no of buses, but neither the government nor the private companies are interested and come to invest in this sector.

The presence of Road and Rail Line on the same ground level

The existing "intercity rail line" passes through the four important Central Business Districts and a number of important and busy roads of Dhaka City. When a train passes, lots of vehicles have to wait near the rail crossing, which causes serious traffic congestion at the interval of every 15 minutes as an average.

Inadequate Parking Facilities

Most of the new shopping centers or commercial buildings do not have adequate parking facilities. People have to park on the roads, which ultimately narrow down the effective width of the roads to a great extent.

Before the approval, many building projects show that they will provide parking facility in the basement. But after getting the authorization to construct a project, the builders or owners usually do not follow the proposed plan properly.

Other Causes

Political reasons:

Everyday at least one or two street processions or protests occur in Dhaka because of the all-time political instability of Bangladesh. These processions slow down the traffic flow of the important streets during the peak hour.

Lack of manpower:

As it was said before, the people of Dhaka City usually do not follow the traffic rules if there is no police on the roads. The existing number of policemen of Dhaka City is only 1561 [1999 data]. If we compare this data with that of Delhi, which has almost the same volume of population, we will see that Delhi has more efficient force with 12000 policemen.

WHERE IS THE CONGESTION?

Some hot spots of Dhaka City have been identified, where most of the traffic congestion occurs. Some of these spots are:

Intersection of the busy roads

About 20 congested intersections of Dhaka City are responsible for the 75% of the total vehicle delays [1997 data].

Near the Inter city Bus Terminals

Intersection of Roads and Rail Lines

In some busy shopping and commercial strips

WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?

Although the problem of traffic congestion is universal, its solution is highly geocentric. What is applicable or what should be applicable in Europe or USA, might not be applicable in every country of Asia. As for Bangladesh, we can not also take some remedies like USA or Europe because of our technical or technological deficiency.

Bangladesh Government is trying to prepare some strategic plans and policies to improve the transportation system of Dhaka City, mostly to meet the future travel demand and to reduce the severe traffic congestion of present time.