Traffic management

Photo: Kaizer / driknews

With great reluctance I had to make two trips to Uttara recently from my sanctuary in Niketon between 1:00PM and 10.30PM. On both occasions it took more than an hour to reach my destinations while the general comment of the driver was “We are lucky today, there is practically no traffic!!” All motor vehicles were weaving about in all lanes and overtaking from all sides. No traffic discipline was seen. Perhaps the on-going Mobile Courts were busy elsewhere.
Traffic controllers are invited to replicate traffic discipline as on Road No 2, Gulshan-1. This was a notoriously grid-locked road for Niketon and Gulshan (South). During rush hours, you were lucky to traverse its 1 km length in less than an hour. A few months ago, parts were made one-way, about half a dozen paid volunteers man the road strictly. Parking is banned (though not fully implemented yet) and rickshaws are allowed free access both ways. Result: You are through in minutes even though the road is in terrible condition. HOORAY FOR GULSHAN SOCIETY!! (especially for realizing the importance of rickshaws in Dhaka's transportation). Now if only the Road 2-Niketon (adjacent to the Park) turning could be stream-lined, traffic from/to Niketon would be ideal.
If the crores of pot-holes large and small, shallow & deep, old and new on Dhaka's 'roads' are divided by the sum allotted for road repairs in the budget, we will probably come to the grand sum of 02 poisha earmarked for each pot-hole.
The “ban-the-rickshaw” disease has now spread to Uttara according to two letters of DS readers recently. I saw it being enforced in all its majesty on my enforced trips to Uttara recently. Have the traffic controllers become totally bereft of ideas and reconciled to rickshaw-free roads being their only salvation till the multi-crore 'freeway lollipops' being dangled before the gullible public becomes a reality, if ever?