Keynote Lectures:

Title:         Challenge of Dhaka Megacity and Pro-People Mass Transport System
Authors:    Md. Akter Mahmud
Abstract:   The way Dhaka’s transportation system had been developed; it never reflected the citizen’s aspiration, followed the travel pattern or merely addressed the travel demand of mass people of the city. Revised Strategic Transport Plan (RSTP) of 2016 finds, among the present 29.8 million daily trips, people made around 47% trips by the public buses, 9% by cars and 32% by rickshaws. In 2005, Strategic Transport plan (STP) in its household survey found that, 76% modal shares are of “short-distance” (less than 3 km). About 34% of total travel share are made on rickshaw and 48% of total travel share either by foot or non-motorized vehicle. Large portion of the travelers are dependent on either foot or non-motorized vehicle for their principal mode of their trips. Except MRT Line 6 and BRT Line 3, those two projects are just been started recently, proposals of mass transportation envisioned in STP have yet to take off the ground even after eight years of STP approval. Almost 20% of the people of Dhaka City use to walk which is considered as the cheapest and environment-friendly mode as their primary mode of transportation (DHUTS, 2009) . Even though large share of people are pedestrians, the facilities for pedestrians are not properly ensured. Urban transport system in Dhaka city heavily dependent of the road transport though it doesn’t have an organized-disciplined public transport system. Traffic composition is chaotic mixture of cars, buses, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles etc. Continued private car oriented development of infrastructure has worsen the traffic gridlock and pollution in the city. From a study of RHD it has been found that, annual loss caused by traffic congestions in Dhaka city is around Tk. 200 billion where due to delay time on the streets accounts for nearly Tk 120 billion, Tk 40 billion in the area of trade and export, Tk 25 billion for environmental causes and the rest of the amount for the medical and other purposes. About 3.2 million business hours are lost due to traffic congestion every day. (Financial Express, Sep 9, 2012) The vast majority of trips in Dhaka are done by foot, rickshaw and public bus. Interesting findings came from the household survey of STP in 2005, where for primary mode of transport about a one third city people use rickshaws (34%), almost half (44%) use buses, 14% people prefer to walk and only 8% people use “non-transit motorized” vehicles. In RSTP (2015), observing the daily traffic volumes across the DMA area on 1,882 thousand passenger trips (except walk, railway and boat trips) RSTP (2015) shows that public transportation modes (i.e., bus, laguna, microbus, CNG and rickshaw) account for more than 80% of the traffic between Dhaka Metropolitan Area and its adjoining areas and in particular buses dominate those public modes. It seems, public expenditure is not being spending on the pro-people public transport facilities rather highest priority is getting the projects that serve minimum section of people having cars (less than 8% of total modal share). Considering the socio-economy of city dwellers, affordability, resource of the government, provision of infrastructure potentials etc a pro-people public transport system extremely necessary for sustainability of Dhaka City. Only by paying due attention to the improved public transport system for mass people can reduce the congestion of Dhaka city. Strategic Transport Plan (STP) for Dhaka city has been prepared in 2005 for a period of twenty years up to 2025 and was approved in 2008 by the government of Bangladesh. So, it became the legal binding to implement the STP’s proposals as per the time frame spell out. STP has recommended for installation of a Mass Transit system with the combination of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Metro System as a solution of transport problems of Dhaka City among ten alternative transportation strategies. BRT has emerged as an economically self-reliant mass transit system with significant potential for budget-constrained developing cities. The successful BRT systems, particularly in Latin American cities, have evolved through broad-based participation of all the actors and fair distribution of costs, risk and benefits among the same (Ardilla; Wright 2005).

Pages:       004-004

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