The Dhaka Metro Rail has long been hailed as a silver-bullet solution to one of the capital’s most egregious problems: Severe traffic.
With the average speed of our traffic being equal to that of the average walking speed, innumerable hours are wasted on the roads for the citizens, bringing down productivity in the process.
To that end, the prompt completion of the Dhaka Metro Rail has been high on the government’s agenda for the last decade or so. And now, with an estimated 70% of the construction work of the first phase of Dhaka Metro Rail (the Uttara-Agargaon part) having already been completed by December last year, there is every reason to believe that the Metro Rail will be coming into fruition soon enough.
A comprehensive metro system would go a long way in ensuring that the city runs as efficiently as it can. Not limited to easing the pressure off of our roads and highways, the Metro Rail is estimated to cut down the number of private cars on the streets, thus helping reduce emissions by a good amount.
Depending on how fuel-efficient the Metro Rail ends up being, this could mean a lot in terms of improving the capital’s environmental integrity.
Now that the government is planning to launch a trial run of the Metro Rail sometime later this year, there is also a survey underway to potentially extend the project from Motijheel to Kamalapur.
However, at this critical juncture, it is now all the more important for the government, and all sectors involved, to be more decisive with the project. The deadline for the Metro Rail has already been extended from its initial 2024 window, and it would benefit everyone for the deadline to not slip any further.
With a new year comes new hopes, and there is no expectation more pressing for the citizens of Dhaka than the prompt completion of this highly ambitious project.
