Buses becoming slower

City buses move at a snails pace at a road intersection.Photo: STAR

Due to traffic congestions and mismanagement buses are getting slower in most of the busy city streets, causing loss of time, energy and money of the passengers.
Average speed of buses came down from around 17km per hour in 2000 to 12.9 km in 2005 and it is likely to decrease to only 5.2km in 2014.
This was revealed in a study conducted under the Strategic Transport Planning (STP), a 20-year project on the city's transportation system.
The baseline survey pointed out that the bus speed is gradually decreasing due to absence of proper initiatives on city traffic management.
Luis Berger Group of USA, and Bangladesh Consultants Limited, a local consultant, jointly conducted the STP surveys for the communications ministry.
Rafiqul Islam, deputy team leader of Bangladesh Consultants Limited, said they worked on the traffic speed in 2005 and this is the latest survey on this.
“The current trends of Dhaka city transport system suggest that the buses will continue to get slower than our survey time,” he pointed out.
The survey was done just after implementation of the Dhaka Urban Transport Project (DUTP) aimed at ensuring smooth traffic flow in the capital.
The monitoring report on the DUTP revealed that all the examined bus routes got slow between 2000 and 2005 and reached bellow 13km per hour.
For a trip from Gabtoli to Gulistan via Nilkhet, a bus needed 39.8 minutes in 2000. The trip time increased to 50.2 minutes in 2005, the survey report says.
The average speed of buses on this route was 17km per hour in 2000 and in five years it came down to 13.2km.
A bus required about 40 minutes to finish a trip from Kuril to Sadarghat via Malibagh in 2000. After five years, buses took 50 minutes for a trip on this route.
On Motijheel-Mirpur 10 route (via Farmgate), buses took 44 minutes to finish a trip in 2000 and in five years the trip time increased to about 50 minutes.
Average speed of buses in 2000 was 15 km per hour on this route while it came down to 13.2km in 2005.
However, average speed of buses on Airport-Gulistan route (via Farmgate) remains almost the same -- around 67 minutes.
The trip time of buses running between Gulshan-2 and Peer Jangi Mazar (via Mohakhali) was 60.5 minutes in 2000 and 83.5 minutes in 2005.
Average bus speed on this route was 15.1km per hour in 2000 that fell to 9.6km in 2005.
Buses took 36.2 minutes to finish a trip from Motijheel to Mohammadpur via Science Lab in 2000 and the trip time rose to 53 minutes in 2005.
On this route average speed in 2000 was about 15km that decreased to 10.3km in 2005.
The only exception is Gulistan-Mirpur 1 route via Farmgate on which a bus took 60.5 minutes to finish a trip in 2000 and 55.7 minutes in 2005.
As the city buses carry 60 percent of the total passengers, time consuming bus trips cause financial losses and waste of time of passengers.
The slow buses increases travel cost and time. In the monitoring report of DUTP, the time cost of a bus is assumed at Tk 596 per minute. The survey pointed out that 15.3 million taka is lost per day if the buses delay 9 minutes in a trip on average.
The report blames unusual growth of human and vehicle population in the city for the slower traffic movement. Population growth of the city was more than 50 percent while vehicle ownership growth was 64 percent during the survey period.