In this politically momentous year for Bangladesh, an article about the Metro Rail may not seem a high priority. Many people in Dhaka will not have tried it for a start.
Of course, Dhaka’s population is such that this still leaves hundreds of thousands of people using MRT6 between Uttara and Motijheel every day. The Metro Rail was never a case of “if you build it, they will come.” We were already there waiting.
Despite only tentatively increasing its (still far from optimum) frequency of trains and operational hours, the Metro Rail’s estimated daily ridership of 290,000 passengers is enough to match the whole of Bangladesh Railway’s (BR) three and a half thousand-kilometre-long network.
If you want to do the arithmetic BR has been around since 1862, and whilst new projects have been growing fast since 2010 when it carried 65 million people, the ADB’s 2020 report put BR’s passenger numbers at just under 93 million passengers a year.
As a visitor to the capital who has gone out of their way during the past two years to ride the 20-kilometre length of MRT6, I highly recommend exercising your curiosity. In less than two years, speeding through the rooftops of famous landmarks around Shahbag or journeying outwards to Uttara, has gone from a novelty to an everyday reality, in a city that sorely needs more of the same.
For all the interest I take in discussions about Bangladesh’s future, it is good to get away from think tanks and ivory tower talking shops. Dhaka’s Metro Rail project stands out not just as the country’s first electrified railway, but as a tangible example of the best type of development and modernity. Uniquely among transport options in Bangladesh, Metro Rail delivers a high-quality service, whilst genuinely being widely accessible and much used, in a way which can never be matched by exclusive 5-star airport lounges.
This is not to say other types of transport can not be enjoyable. If you’re brave enough, it’s possible to commute more cleanly and speedily by bicycle than by car. As a compact, flat city, walking ought to be a much more pleasurable and stress-free option in Dhaka than reality allows.
To me the blinkered 1950s mindset of city planners who think it better to build footbridges in a 35-degree monsoon climate than to use automated fining systems to incentivize drivers to obey traffic lights, speed limits and zebra crossings, seems sociopathic.
Early on a Friday, a bus can be a speedy as well as cheap crosstown option, but of course this is an exception. Reforms envisaged by the rollout of the Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority and Rapid pass cannot come soon enough.
Dhaka’s Metro Rail project stands out not just as the country’s first electrified railway, but as a tangible example of the best type of development and modernity
Neither of these will work without also comprehensively bringing in bus lanes and ensuring investment in better vehicles and a functional network of well signed bus stops. Given the amount of car journeys that buses can reduce, the opportunity costs of failing to prioritize improvements in bus services are immense.
While Tuk-Tuks are commonplace across continents, I’ve never really cared for CNGs. Rickshaws on the other hand … In terms of convenience and pampering as a passenger, nothing for me beats stepping from a hot pavement to enjoy a cooling breeze and quick ride across a neighbourhood.
Sadly, it rarely feels the same for the rickshaw pedaller. In big cities at least, they are unlikely to be an owner-operator. As across so much of Bangladesh’s economy for day labourers, the highly visible toil and sweat of rickshaw pedallers does more to build the capital of those from whom they rent shifts.
Nationally river ferries are perhaps the most important form of transport cheaply connecting all corners of the land. Just like the quagmire of corrupt vested interests that ruins Dhaka’s buses, cutthroat competition among poorly regulated ferry operators causes a shocking number of unnecessary accidents.
A decade long survey of safety in the global passenger ferry industry by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation found that ferries in Bangladesh have a fatality rate second only to that in the Philippines, which having many thousands of islands and miles of coastline, has vastly more risky sea bound traffic.
Metro Rail is in a different league as a civic space and high-quality high speed public service.
There are teething troubles, notably with queues for tickets, which can take longer than journeys themselves; the existing system of only allowing a few bank branches and stations to sell and top up passes was clearly never fit for purpose.
Perhaps, with passenger ridership as high as it already is, but with most lines still to be built, DMTC does not have the capacity to address this yet. But there is no technical reason why purchasing tickets and passes should not be as simple as topping up phone credits.
Evidence of MRT’s popularity can be seen by the proliferation of passenger groups lobbying for everything from brand new route extensions to concessionary fares. These all have their merits, though I draw the line at passengers being given free-to-use toilets, when for Tk100 the entire length from Uttara to Motijheel can be ridden in air-conditioned Japanese designed elegance in just over half an hour.
Passengers will benefit most from authorities increasing the range of places where tickets can be bought in advance to minimize queues at machines, and the operator speeding up staff recruitment and train procurement to allow more trains to be run each hour, so it becomes an even smoother and speedier turn up and go service.
Given the costs of congestion, investments like these will easily pay for themselves. Time is of the essence. The government needs to get a move on.
Niaz Alam is London Bureau Chief, Dhaka Tribune.
