Faster travel to Mymensingh

Once you take the newly-constructed Dhaka-Mymensingh highway after the agonising 12-km journey from Abdullapur to Joydebpur intersection, you will heave a sigh of relief.

The four-lane expanded road will give you a different picture from the ones across the country. People travelling for the first time on this road will be amazed.

The spacious central reservation and a few miles of greenery on both sides of the highway, especially when you cross Masterbari and enter the forest area of Bhawal National Park, are refreshing.

However, the journey on this 87km highway -- from Joydebpur intersection to Mymensingh -- will be interrupted as construction work on several kilometres in Bhaluka is yet to be complete. Final surfacing and installation of medians are going on    there.

Still, one can reach Mymensingh from Joydebpur in only one and a half hours, which used to take at least three hours or even more due to the dilapidated condition and narrowness of the road.

Both passengers and drivers expressed satisfaction over the condition of the highway on Wednesday.

“Now I visit my village home in Trishal every week and it takes less travel time,” said Aslamul Alam, who works for an insurance company.

Azam, a driver of a car rental company, said he wants to have more trips on Dhaka-Mymensingh or Dhaka-Chittagong highway as both have been widened.

“Driving on a good, wide road is less tiring for a driver,” he told The Daily Star at Mawna Bus Stand.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will open the highway today through a video-conference at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the city.

People travelling to Sherpur, Netrakona and Jamalpur from Dhaka also use the road and will be benefitted from its expansion.

Once fully complete, journey on this highway would be more comfortable than what it is now, hoped Roads and Highways Department officials. They said three more months will be needed to complete the rest of the work.

However, danger still lurks on the highway as the road markings are faulty and reckless driving of vehicles continues unabated.

This correspondent made a round trip to Mymensingh on Wednesday to get hands-on experience.

During the journey, it was found that inadequate road markings and signals along the highway, haphazard driving and driving on the wrong side of the road and plying of slow-moving three-wheelers were the impediments to smooth traffic movement.

Besides, buses and other vehicles often stop in the middle of the road to take and drop off passengers. The roadside bazaars and people haphazardly crossing the highway make the journey more hazardous.

Passengers are yet to reap the full benefits of the road expansion due to these problems.

Accidents may happen anytime if drivers are not conscious enough. Even, battery-run auto-rickshaws often use the wrong side of the road.

“Expanding road for faster communication can pose serious threats if there is no control on the enforcement of traffic rules. All types of vehicles -- fast and slow moving -- use the road, making it risky for all,” said transport expert Prof Shamsul Hoque.

He said the newly built road might turn into a chaotic one if these issues were not taken care of.

“There should be a separate lane for slow-moving vehicles while shops, parking and bazaars should not be allowed along or adjacent to the road,” Shamsul, who teaches civil engineering at Buet, said.

Necessary instructions for road use like right-turns, u-turn signs, island markings are not there, while fading marks on speed bumps have made the road unsafe both at day and night.

Project Director of Dhaka-Mymensingh four-lane Project Hafiz Uddin said the rest of the work, including placing road signs and markings, would be completed soon to make the journey safer and smooth.

Regarding haphazard plying of vehicles, he said, “It's the problem of road management.”

Currently, an average of 20,000 vehicles ply Dhaka-Mymensingh highway daily and the number will be increasing during Eid rush.