All efforts made by the authorities concerned to restore discipline on Dhaka streets appear to have proved futile. In spite of regular observance of traffic awareness campaigns and road disciplining drives by the law enforcers, there has been a little improvement in the capital’s chaotic traffic situation. Violation of traffic rules, reckless driving and racing on roads by drivers have continued to remain the order of the day in this ever-expanding mega city, causing vexing traffic congestion and frequent road crashes.
The latest road accident in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area on Thursday claimed the life of Fahmida Haque Labannya, 21, a 3rd year student of Computer Science at BRAC University. Repeated incidents of such road crashes have kept continued haunting the city people, raising question among them whether the ongoing drive has yielded any results. Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and other authorities concerned on March 24 launched massive drive across the city against unfit vehicles and drivers who run vehicles without driving license.
And the drive will continue till May 10. They formed special taskforce to conduct the drive. Besides, the fortnightly traffic discipline programme, traffic week and fortnightly programme have also been launched to have a disciplined traffic system in this chaotic city of Dhaka. But their all initiatives have failed to bring back discipline on the city roads.
During the drive BRTA and police are filing cases, taking away buses using the wreckers and dumping vehicles at roadside places, intensifying the traffic chaos throughout the city.
They are taking action against unfit, route permit less, rundown, indiscriminate parking and outdated model vehicles.
And thus made transport workers angry. The public transport owners, drivers and workers withdrew their most buses from the streets, causing immense sufferings to the commuters. Only 25 percent to 30 percent buses are now plying the city streets, according to transport owners and workers association. City commuters are facing enormous sufferings as most of the public transports remain off the streets since April 09. And the city commuters are being held hostage by them in many ways. Everyday hundreds of people, including women, are seen waiting for hours at different bus stops and intersections.
Their sufferings knew no bounds due to severe crisis of buses. According to DMP study, some 250 private companies are running over 7000 buses in the capital on several routes.
Buses are plying the city streets under around 250 companies which is absurd according to the study. On the other hand, globally, buses run under a single state-owned agency. If all the buses run under a single company in the capital, the situation may improve.
Most of the commuters who board city buses are professionals, businessmen and students. Earlier Prime Minister issued directive not to run buses on contractual basis. But the transport workers are still running the buses on contractual basis. According to the DMP, the bus owners’ current system of daily contract with drivers and their helpers is one of the main reasons behind the road accidents.
Earlier DMP Commissioner Asaduzzaman Mia admitted that the DMP and other authorities concerned have failed to ensure discipline on roads in the capital. He is frequently saying despite the sincerity of traffic police to bring discipline in the streets, their attempts are not yielding results due to people's tendency to violate traffic rules. However, the government is trying to overcome this problem. As part of electoral pledges, 4,000 more new modern bus services will be introduced in the capital for bringing discipline in mass transport system.
In this regard it is going to replace unfit buses from the city roads with the new ones. Apart from these, it is also planning to deploy air-conditioned buses for women. Sufferings of women, school-going children and office goers will be reduced remarkably after the new buses come to the city streets. After the implementation of the new policy, buses with different colours would ply separate lanes.
White colour buses will run on one lane, red colour ones will run on another and green on the other lane. The buses will take passengers orderly and get them off to their desired destinations. Apart from introducing this system, five new bus terminals will be built in the capital. The new system would lessen individual owner or company as they had a plan to bring down the number bus companies to five to six.