Arifa, a private jobholder, left her Shahjahanpur residence at 9:00am to attend a very important meeting scheduled to be held at 10:00am at her Shahbagh office.
But she failed to reach her destination on time as she reached the office at 12:00 noon due to huge traffic congestion yesterday.
It took CNG run auto-rickshaw driver Almas around two hours to come to Farmgate from his Motijheel residence, which usually takes 30 to 50 minutes.
Like Arifa and Almas, city dwellers experienced huge tailbacks at almost all intersections and busy areas in the capital from morning to noon yesterday.
Though traffic congestion in the city is a regular phenomenon, yesterday’s congestion was far more severe than the usual days, which made city commuters suffer huge problems like Arifa.
According to Dhaka Metropolitan Police, due to movement of some VIP and the parliamentary session scheduled to resume yesterday, vehicular movement needed to be restricted at intervals at different points in the city, resulting in huge tailbacks.
Deputy Commissioner Traffic (West) Selim Mohammad Jahangir of Dhaka Metropolitan Police said once a tailback is created at some point in the city, its impact falls on surrounding areas.
He added that the situation needs several hours to come back to normalcy.
“We face huge traffic congestion on Sunday regularly as this is the first working day of the week after two days of weekly holiday but yesterday’s traffic congestion was more severe,” said Almas.
Police sources said severe traffic congestion took place at Farmgate, Banglamotor, Bijoy Sharani, Jatrabari, Malibagh, Mouchack, Shahbagh, Mohakhali, Gulshan, Banani and Uttara areas.
At many level crossing, it was seen that its guard kept the bars down to keep the rail tracks free from traffic as the apparently unending long tailbacks tended to stretch onto the rail track due to unusual stoppage periods at traffic lights.
On duty rail guard at Tongi Diversion road level crossing of Moghbazar kept the bar down, stopping vehicular movement over the tracks as traffic came to a standstill at Moghbazar intersections for over half an hour around 1:00pm.
Contacted, the guard said if he did not keep the bar down the queue of vehicles will come onto the rail tracks. With no rooms to go forward or backward, the vehicles would be caught on the path of oncoming trains, resulting in an accidents, he added.
