Better buses, fewer cars

Dhaka’s untenable traffic situation has gone on for too long, with little to no action being taken by the administration to mitigate it. However, the recent revelation that the current average speed of Dhaka’s traffic is just a little above the average walking speed is too much to take. This is a problem that now severely impacts our economy. Consuming up to 3.2 million hours a day, Dhaka’s unnaturally dense traffic is causing the nation to lose out on billions of dollars every day. To that end, environmentalist group Poribesh Bachao Andolon’s recent call for policy-makers to seriously look into this issue with traffic is worth noticing. While the economic ramifications of Dhaka’s uncontrollable traffic have been established, it also wreaks serious havoc on the environment, an issue that affects anyone living in the city. There is no getting around the fact that the way to solve the traffic problem in the city is through better, more comprehensive public transportation. With a better bus system and fewer cars in the street, not only would congestion go down, so would air pollution levels in the capital. The late Annisul Huq’s plan as mayor to form seven companies operating 4,000 buses was a step in the right direction. By pairing his existing plans with the concept of making space for dedicated bus lanes on the roads of Dhaka, we could go a long way towards making Dhaka a little less congested. And that would be, no doubt, a major step towards making Dhaka more liveable.