Dhaka traffic, a never-ending nuisance

With Dhaka's traffic, is it still fair to expect people to be on time?

The government has been working on building 258km of underground rail to ease up the traffic of Dhaka city. This plan consists of 11 different subway routes in Dhaka by 2050. Urban planners have called the project "costly" and "ambitious." They are saying that the project will not bring any positive change in the traffic congestion of the capital.

The number of homebound people on Dhaka-Aricha and Nabinagar-Chandra highways in Savar increased this noon. However, the number of vehicles did not.

After the government decided to reopen all educational institutions, Dhaka traffic has regained its former glory. The shift from online to in-person classes and work has highlighted Dhaka’s inability to handle all of the traffic, and massive infrastructure development projects are not helping either.

A few days ago I travelled to Kushtia, a city situated in the southwest of Bangladesh from my hometown, Mymensingh. As our car was about to enter the city, we were faced with a huge tailback of trucks, cars, buses, and vans carrying passengers and goods.

From speeding downhill to strolling solo, from racing in alleys to wandering in faraway wherever, the joys of cycling barely begin here.

The beginning of Ramadan is when city dwellers enjoy less chaotic traffic on streets but yesterday, the first day of the holy month, people endured standstill traffic for hours in downtown Dhaka as agitating hawkers blocked several roads in Gulistan.

City authorities have tried out a host of “solutions” to control chaotic traffic over the decades. The result? All the money went down the drain and the situation turned from bad to worse.

City residents suffered dreadful traffic snarl-ups yesterday afternoon as Nagorik Committee organised a huge rally at the Suhrawardy Udyan.

Surprise, surprise! Why are these headlines – Traffic goes haywire, City chokes on jam and so on -- hogging the newspaper pages? So what if the cars stop dead on the streets? Well, I did not feel anything and I crisscrossed this small city and reached all the spots on time yesterday! What was wrong with all these people!

Commuters today suffered in the sweltering heat on the city roads as most of them had to spend at least thirty minutes to an hour more than the usual time to reach their destinations due to an unusual traffic jam.

If you visit Dhaka’s Gulshan, Banani and Baridhara areas nowadays, you will have to brace yourself for never-ending traffic, dust and mud. And there is always a risk that you may even fall into a ditch. The posh areas are now undergoing a development work including widespread road digging, which has led to this miserable situation.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police will not allow use of stickers on vehicles identifying various professions like journalists, police and lawyers.

Instead of introducing more buses, the government is moving to allow 5,000 more CNG-run auto-rickshaws on Dhaka streets, which has the potential to worsen the perennial congestion.

Inaugural of the Mouchak-Moghbazar flyover and a road blockade enforced by nursing students at Shahbagh have led to traffic sufferings for the Dhaka dwellers.

A head-on collision between a truck and a covered van in Comilla has triggered a 10 kilometre long tailback on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway.

Wildlife monitoring network Traffic finds hundreds of protected animals for sale on Facebook groups in Malaysia, including sun bears, gibbons, and binturongs, also known as bearcats.

Students of a private university block Dhaka’s key thoroughfare Mirpur Road in protest against death of a student in road crash.

The Delhi government plans another round of tough measures to restrict the use of private cars and clean up toxic air in the Indian metropolis, the world's most polluted city.