The Views of People About the Effectiveness of Flyover System in Dhaka City

The Views of People about the Effectiveness of Flyover System in Dhaka city

Introduction

Dhaka is not a simple city. Now it is a metropolitan area with around 15 million people. Dhaka city is growing day by day. In the near future it will turn into a huge populated city. The communication and transportation system are very important parts of a city. A better city should provide high-quality communication and transportation system to the people of the city.

Now a day's traffic jam is very common picture of the Dhaka city. Many valuable hours are just gone astray for the traffic jam. The government has taken some step to prevent the traffic congestion and increase the traffic flow. Flyover is one of them and it's a solution of prevent traffic jam and increase traffic flow. The government of Bangladesh already built two flyovers and another two are on the pipeline.

Dhaka is not growing up with proper planning. Only few parts of Dhaka city develop with appropriate plan which has sufficient road and communication system. There is planning about the future traffic demand. So the Dhaka city is already established without proper road and transportation system. For a well balanced communication system a city needs 25% area of total area but the Dhaka city has only 8%-10% area of total area. It is now almost impossible to build new roads in Dhaka city. So the government of Bangladesh builds flyovers to get rid of the problem of traffic jam and ease the traffic flow.

Greater Dhaka is a rapidly growing conurbation serving the needs of over 6 million residents as well as fulfilling the role of Nation Capital to 110 million Bangladeshis. Its success as the primary city of Bangladesh however, will depend very much on the efficient delivery of a rage of urban services of which transport is a key element.

Over the past decade, many observers have commented on the need for various forms of transport infrastructure development from fly-over to high capacity commuter rail systems. Whilst a shortage of development funds has held back the implementation of such capital intensive proposals, a lack of institutional focus has resulted in a gradual deterioration in the effective utilization of existing transport infrastructure.

Within the Planning Commission an emerging awareness of the need to improve transport services in Greater Dhaka, but with proper recognition of resource limitations and competition for these resources from other sectors of the economy. Developing a local capability to analyze and recommend longer term policies and programs to respond to transport needs as the urban area grows and matures.

We have two flyovers in the Dhaka city. One is on the Khilgon and another is on the Mahakhali. November 4, 2004 had been a D-day for some quarters of people engaged in administering the country of ours! Mahakhali fly¬over project was planned to be constructed back in 1994 after due feasibility study undertaken be¬tween 1992-1994 with UNDP fi¬nancing by Dhaka Integrated Transport Study (DTS). As in¬formed the study report had sug¬gested construction of two fly¬overs, one at the present Mahakhali and the second one at Khilgon. Nobody knows why the second one was dropped. Finally, the Mahakhali Flyover (overpass?) construction work was started back in December 2001 by the present government and was opened for public thoroughfare after almost 3 years. As claimed by the concerned Ministry, several at¬tempts were made in the past to complete the project much earlier. But due to usual snag in the overall management this could be done on Nov 4 on the insistence of our Ministry. It remains to be seen the actual utility of the very project as far as the removal of traffic congestion in Dhaka city in general and in that area in particular. The appre¬hension of common people on the "Absolute Contribution" of this project towards solving acute traffic snarl-up in the area of Banani, Mahakhali and Tejgaon area has come true within the last 5 weeks time. There is neither any outlet over the whole length of the "Flyover" or any inlet con¬necting any of the existing roads around. The Marathon run of 1.1 km as well as a very good overhead sprint track for a good running vehicle (runner) at a cost of Taka 113 crore is virtually a big tragedy of this poor country of ours. Possibly a completely new 4-track surface road of "considerable" length could be constructed utilizing the same capital outlay spent on this prestigious project of Dhaka metropolitan city. The fu¬ture projects, for effective utilization of this flyover should be well thought of and executed accord-ingly since traffic volume is ex¬pected to increase in this ever growing populous city. The extent of pollution and coherent effects resulting thereof should also be properly enumerated for safety and health reasons. With the closure of trafficking through the Cantonment area, the situation has worsened. Only lim¬ited thoroughfare is being allowed after due security check. It is not comprehensible to comers as to why restriction has been imposed in moving through the Cantonment roads widened for public use using tax-payers money. Further, the overall cost of wastage of time due to traffic congestion cannot be overem¬phasized. Introduction of innu¬merable big and small size buses in the city roads, without any proper bus-stand, have aggravated the mobility of the citizens of Dhaka. It is well known to the town plan¬ners the importance of having at least 20-25% of the land surface area for public communication system in all newly-built cities and everyone is following that norm. But Alas (!) we are lagging very much on that point also. Instead our government is spending enormous tax-payers money on projects not beneficial to the common people. It is gathered that the cost of the project was revised twice! The final amount of Taka 113 crore is simply an unreasonable figure and should be branded as an un¬wise act on the part of the con¬cerned personnel responsible for executing the project. The Parliamentary Standing Committee is said to have under¬taken a full-fledged investigation into the financial irregularities in¬volving the construction of the project. Someone must answer for it since it involves tax-payers inter¬ests. We expect the report to be made public and possibly this could be an eye-opener for any new project of similar nature in future. It would be worthwhile to re-emphasize on the economy of construction, effective utilization, contribution to national economy etc while planning/constructing any new flyover/overpass in Dhaka city. There are many cross¬ings where we need to have alter¬native roads either over ground or underground in order to ease traffic jams. The indication by our Prime Minister on underground rail system in the city to facilitate movement of the commuters is very encouraging and heartening to the city dwellers. Only two flyovers are not sufficient for this big city communication system. We need to build more flyovers in the busy intersection and make some correction of the present flyover system. We need to plan well and implement quickly and proper maintenance also. If we want to see a well planned city then we should build many flyovers in our busy road intersection. This is used to increase the traffic flow and ease the traffic congestion.

Research Questions

In my research, I plan to find out peoples' opinion about our Dhaka city flyover system. And, is the current system of flyover in Dhaka city is effective enough to stop traffic congestion and increase traffic flow.

So, I tried to address the following research questions concerning my topic-

? Do we need flyovers in Dhaka city?

? Do you think that current flyovers can meet our future traffic demand?

? How is the current flyover in Dhaka city affecting the traffic system?

? What do you think about the current flyover system in Dhaka city?

? How does it compare with other countries' flyover system?

? How do you take this new system?

? Do you think that we have a problem of proper planning about the flyovers?

? Do you think that the Bangladesh Government is taking proper step to build flyovers?

? Do you think our government should adopt the flyover system of other developed countries, considering the economical condition of Bangladesh?

? Do you think the flyover is enough to stop the traffic jam?

? Do you think that the private organization should come to build flyover?

Hypothesis

I think most of the people think that, flyovers in Dhaka city is not working well. This is a new communication structure for us and we need quick preparation program for communication system to get rid from the traffic congestion and increase the traffic flow. Of course, the communication and traffic problems of Dhaka city can not be solved by a single project such as flyover. Flyovers are helping us to reduce the congestion at crowded intersection. But without a comprehensive program those new infrastructure is simply fly over the intersection from one sea of congestion to congestion.