For any city to be considered modern, an efficient and effective public transport system is a major component.
Which is why it is all the more unfortunate that Dhaka’s bus system has fallen into a state of disrepair that it hasn’t been able to find a way out of.
It is one of the reasons behind why the state of our capital city’s traffic is as in-navigable as it is, extreme levels of congestion have continued despite the construction of various flyovers in numerous parts of the city.
Focusing on improving the state of our public transport, especially our bus system, is absolutely imperative if only to combat our traffic problems.
To that end, the recent announcement of two new routes for the Dhaka Nagar Paribahan bus service comes as some small-scale good news for those of us who rely on public transport for our day-to-day commute -- with a total of 100 buses, 50 on each, planned to be plying the routes.
While left unrealized, the late Mayor Annisul Huq’s grand plans for revitalizing Dhaka’s bus system remains full of promise -- the idea was a colour-coded system, where easily identifiable buses would follow a specific route.
This would have introduced some much-needed linearity into the existing chaos that is our bus infrastructure.
One of the primary reasons behind the current state of chaos, of course, is the lack of any dedicated lanes for buses on our roads. That alone could go a long way towards making Dhaka a less suffocating place for its denizens.
If our nation wishes to make more meaningful steps towards the desired middle-income status and beyond, it must improve the way the public transport system currently functions.
Improving our bus system is a good place to set the wheels in motion.
