Phasing out rickshaws

The middle class and the lower middle classes have to be provided with cheap transport options, mechanised or non-mechanised, for two main reasons: the huge rate of urban migration, which successive regimes have failed to control; and Bangladesh has the highest density of population in the world (around 1,000 persons per sq km). Our economic fertility cannot match the fertility rates in other natural sectors (waters, floods, corruption, terrorism, etc).

The measures to control road traffic cannot be solved in one step or phase, but has to be phased out into several periods within a decade or 15 years. The international donor agencies have to be more realistic than lure investments with proposals which cannot be tested in the developed countries, because such woeful infrastructures do into exist; and later generation donor officials have no first hand experience of poverty and living under poor conditions.

Increasing the number of buses won't solve the problems; as there is no road capacity for running buses every five minutes on 150 routes daily within the DCC. Even now large buses with huge footprints have been introduced, instead of small buses at more frequent intervals. How this bright idea was approved, living on mini-streets?

Suburban living depends on fast and cheap rail and launch services every few minutes, which our standard and earning cannot sustain. Even today Dhaka has no circular train or fast and frequent local trains, and the elevated highways have not yet started working. What is the hurry to kill the enemy rickshaw? We forget we have to be labour-incentive during several earlier phases of development (that is the reason our RMG is so popular export-wise).

Our culture is different: the women passengers cannot jostle with the males to handle the nerve-shattering traffic conditions. Can the middle class afford to buy a small car on HP? The taxi services (three and four wheels) have not yet been standardised for courteous service even after two years, due to lack of discipline, monitoring, regulatory control, and underhand payments and tolls (by the owners!), and other social, cultural, economic and political factors which have been analysed by the professionals for studies. We are aware that the majority of the drivers and public vehicles and trucks operate with fake documents. About 70-80 per cent would disappear if the police were honest: Then how to run the transport sector?