One-way system not working well for lax monitoring
City Correspondet
Dhanmondi residents enjoyed a month-long run of virtually empty, traffic-free streets thanks to the back-to-back holidays of Eid-ul-Azha, national elections and year-end as most of the educational institutions were closed during the time.
But that is about to end. “The bad news is classes in many schools have resumed. In another week or two classes in all schools will be in full swing and then terrible traffic jams in Dhanmondi will be back as usual,” said Tanveer Hossain, a teacher.
Dhanmondi, best recognised for its residential apartments, hospitals and private schools, has been plagued with traffic congestions. But the scenes on Dhanmondi streets have changed to some extent over the past one year, as the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) introduced one-way traffic in a number of streets.
During the past three or four weeks the Dhanmondi streets were traffic jam-free mainly due to the fact that most of the schools were closed at that time. Since the first week of this months schools started to resume their classes. And the gridlocks are slowly making a comeback in all the Dhanmondi streets.
In a bid to rid the residential area of the gridlocks, a comprehensive one-way traffic system was introduced in May last year. The roads 6, 7, 8, 6A, 7A, 8A, 9A, 10A, 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A and several other areas of Dhanmondi were brought under this scheme.
Initially, around 150 cops were deployed to monitor the new traffic system. Baton-wielding law enforcers were seen next to signs prohibiting vehicle entries, honking and parking in front of schools and other organisations.
Dhanmondi residents, to their surprise, observed that much of the haphazardly parked vehicles disappeared, removing traffic chaos while no offenders escape the penalties.
However, the whole system failed when the law enforcers were taken off the streets.
“Now there are practically no traffic police here to monitor the one-way system,” said a resident of Dhanmondi road-11. “The only spots where you would find traffic sergeant are the bridge near the road no 8 and road no 27,” he said.
“You may also find some traffic cops in the streets during the school hours. But the moment the school hours are over, they disappear and the situation becomes chaotic,” said Ivan Karim, a resident of Dhanmondi road-8.
“Things get worse in the lakeside streets. There are always some programmes taking place by the lake drawing a lot of people. Absence of traffic enforcers there worsens tailbacks in other streets of Dhanmondi,” he said.
With the departure of traffic officials, the job to monitor the streets has been taken over by the untrained and unqualified community police who can rarely exert authority.
“I doubt they have any training in handling traffic,” said Bashir Ahmed, a resident of Dhanmondi road-7. “Most often they naively let vehicles enter the one-way streets through the wrong way on request of the drivers. They even let vehicles park in no-parking zones if anyone requests nicely enough,” he said.
But traffic officials would just bin the criticisms. “Of course we are giving our best efforts to control the traffic situation in Dhanmondi,” said a traffic sergeant on duty around Dhanmondi road 8/A.
“Dhanmondi is a traffic hotspot. As the residents here have got used to the one-way traffic system, we decided to relocate some of our forces to some adjoining areas,” he said adding, “Dhanmondi still remains one of our top priorities.”
In absence of traffic cops the community police are still positioned, and they are doing a great job, he said.
Sources said the traffic police lack both manpower and logistics to supervise all the points of the whole city. So it would be unwise to devote a larger contingent of the force to oversee just one area, said some traffic officials.
However, Dhanmondi residents have some suggestions, which they believe would help ease the traffic congestion in their area.
“The traffic authorities should learn from big cities abroad. They should develop and introduce patrol cars for the area rather than round-the-clock police vigilance,” said Naheen Akter, a resident of Dhanmondi 8/A.
“The schools can also play a role in easing traffic jam in Dhanmondi. They can appeal to the parents to abide by traffic rules and avoid parking cars near schools,” she said.
Courtesy: thedailystar.net
