Speakers tell discussion
Planned management of the existing roads and its strict enforcement can resolve only one-fourth of the horrendous traffic problem in the city, said noted engineers and planners at a discussion yesterday.
Only a multi-modal transport system including roads, waterways and railways can provide a long-term transport solution to make a metropolitan city sustainable, not merely a road-based facility, they said. Mass transport system, including rapid metro rail and buses, is the ultimate solution, they added.
Mukto Akash, a monthly magazine, and Bangladesh Association of Construction Industry (BACI) organised the discussion at Bangladesh Institute of Planners.
“Engineered management is crucial, not the length or total amount of roads,” said Prof Md Shamsul Hoque, a technical expert involved with half a dozen ongoing transport projects in the city.
It can enhance the road’s functional capacity by 50 to 100 per cent, he said this while he was presenting a keynote paper.
Hoque said enforcement of peak hour management, signal coordination, bottleneck-free junctions, access control, one-way, tidal-flow operation (dedicating road space in keeping with demand) and control of land use can bring a relief to the present situation.
Operational capacity of the Dhaka roads is significantly reduced with the heavily-clogged junctions (intersections), as they determine the capacity of a road corridor, he said, adding that there are many avoidable bottlenecks that reduce the junctions’ capacity.
Though a vital precondition, there is no example of carrying out traffic impact assessment before approving a development scheme in the city, he said.
Enforcement of management alone can improve the traffic situation by 25 percent, said Mubasshar Hussein, president of Institute of Architects Bangladesh, adding that the same people, who violate traffic rules across the city, obey them in the cantonment area.
“Hundreds of flyovers and overpasses will not improve traffic situation in Dhaka,” he said.
He demanded relocation of Dhaka cantonment and headquarters of Border Guard Bangladesh (erstwhile BDR) from heart of the city to achieve an overall traffic solution.
Md Nurul Huda, chairman of Rajdhani Unnyan Kartripakhya (Rajuk), said neither the master plan of 1959 nor that of 1995 (the current one that expires in 2015) could be implemented for a planned Dhaka due to organisational weaknesses of Rajuk.
Prof Jamilur Reza Chowdhury also spoke at the discussion chaired by BACI President Shafiqul Alam Bhuiyan.
-With The Daily Star input
