To protect the country’s highways’ projected lifespan and ascertain damage caused by overloaded vehicles, the government is going to set up axle load control centres on 21 points of the major highways across the country. The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) has already approved Tk 1,630.28 crore project, which will be funded from the state exchequer.
The government has constructed a number of multi-lane highways across the country to ensure comfortable and smooth transportation of passengers and goods. But it is seen that after only a few years of construction, those highways get damaged and become almost unusable mainly due to plying of vehicles carrying excess loads.
After introducing the system for controlling overweight of vehicles, highways will be protected from getting damaged. The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) is scheduled to complete the project by June 2022, sources said. According to RHDs, the high ways designed for 15 years was found to be reduced to 12.3, 10.27 and 7.25 years due to 5%, 10% and 20% overloading respectively. Goods-laden trucks and covered vans weighing even more than 22 tons often ply on the highways.
These overloaded vehicles do considerable harm to the highways. As per the project, some 90 set of weighing machine scales and 31 set static weighbridge will be installed besides making proper arrangement for necessary facilities for loading and unloading of goods in every axle load control centre. Some 64.21 hectares of land will be acquired for the project.
CCTVs will also be installed to ensure round the clock monitoring of the operations of the axle load control centres so that no one can resort to load tempering of the vehicles. The 21 points where axle load control centres will be set up are Gazipur Sadar, Keranignoj, Chattogram Sadar, Satkania in Chattogram, Sitakundu, Haluaghat in Mymensingh, Bianibazaar in Sylhet, Madhabpur in Narsingdi, Nalitabari in Sherpur, Feni Sadar, Burichang in Cumilla, Kalihati in Tangail, Tetulia in Panchagarh, Syedpur, Rampal, Satkhira Sadar, Shibchar in Madaripur, Damurhuda in Chuadanga, Roumari in Kurigram and Hakimpur in Dinajpur.
Planning Minister M A Mannan said the number of vehicles has been increasing on the roads. Traders frequently load excess goods on their vehicles. There are two ways to protect longevity of roads- load monitoring and maintenance. This project will monitor loads on the vehicles. The Prime Minister has given some directives in this regard at the ECNEC meeting held on 3 June, he added.
A recent study revealed that 10 percent of overloaded trucks can damage road pavement more than 40 percent comparing to the same load limited truck. Frequently a 21-ton truck is overloaded to 30-ton which can reduce lifespan of a road from 15 years to only 3.16 years, the study revealed further.