Concept And Use Of Dual-use Cars In Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Part 1 -

Prof. Bijon Behari Sarma *

CONCEPT AND USE OF DUAL-USE CARS
IN REDUCING TRAFFIC CONGESTION
IN DHAKA CITY OF BANGLADESH

ABSTRACT :

The narrow and mostly unplanned roads of Dhaka city have generated a special type of transport problem. Huge number of private cars jam the roads at the pick hours and their number is increasing at the rate of about 130 cars per day. In solving this problems various experts suggested solutions like, (a) Metro or underground rail, (b) Monorail, (c) Elevated expressway, (d) Fly over, (e) Increase of large-bodied public transport, (f) Removal of old cars, (g) Imposing restriction on car ownership, (h) Introducing school bus, (i) Decentralization etc. A careful analysis may reveal that

01. Proposal (a), (b) and (c) are extremely costly and do not have any quality to solve the present problem, which is jamming due to cars.

02. Proposal (d) may solve the problem of jam at some locations by transferring the same to another location. However, it does not solve jamming of roads. Also in Dhaka there is scarcity of suitable land to construct flyovers.

03. Proposal (e) cannot reduce the number of cars, but can only increase the total number of vehicles.

04. Proposal (f) and (g) are absurd and fruitless talks.

05. Proposal (i) can help in reducing jam near the schools and can contribute nothing more.

06. Proposal (i) is an excellent solution for solving car-jamming. But those having knowledge about Bangladesh and the way its government work know well that the government would not be able to materialize it.

In this paper two other inexpensive proposals have been discussed. These are : (j) Dwellers-Participation based Administrative Planning policy (DPAP) and (k) Dual-use car. None of these has still been tried anywhere in the world, even though their implementations are not at all difficult. In this paper these above issues have been discussed with some details of the proposal for introducing Dual use car. The author is confident, if introduced the Dual-use cars will be able to solve the specialized type of transport problem of Dhaka city.

INTRODUCTION :

Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh has got numerous problems. However, the most irritating one of these is the ever increasing travel-time due to jamming of roads by vehicles. Quite often the vehicles need to wait for half an hour or more in one jam. If a person faces five or six such jams, then he would have to waste extremely valuable three additional hours per trip. The government has taken some measures, mostly following the knowledge and examples from the developed countries. Even though some of those acted well at the initial stage, the situation turned the same after a few months. At present the government is thinking of taking some extremely costly projects.

As a scientific phenomenon transportation is related not only with engineering aspects of road (width, finishing, curvature, junction etc) and vehicle (size, permissible velocity, maneuverability etc.), but also with social aspects like people's attitude, their physical fitness, patience, expectation etc. and country's economic reality and capability to spend. Since the non-physical contexts in Bangladesh are quite different from those of the developed countries most, if not all, of their solutions do not work efficiently in this land. In such a context one fine suggestion may be to devise out the solution based on local condition. In this paper we shall endeavor to present such a proposal, of course in the form of a concept, that has not yet been tried anywhere in this world.

INVESTIGATING THE EFFICIENCY OF ROAD AND TRAFFIC JAM :

EFFICIENCY OF ROAD IN TRANSPORTING PASSENGERS : The efficiency of any road in transporting passengers depends upon : (i) Unit space by the passenger and (ii) Practical speed of the vehicle. Naturally efficiency increases with lessening of unit space and increase in vehicular speed.

(i). UNIT SPACE required by the passenger : This is given by the total space occupied by any vehicle divided by the number of people accommodated within it. Naturally unit space is maximum for private cars and minimum for the double-decker bus. It is obvious that the less will be the "unit space" the more will be the efficiency and vice versa.

PERMISSIBLE SPEED : It is the maximum and minimum speed prescribed by the concerned authorities for various vehicles. The minimum speed is usually imposed on vehicles running in the high speed lane.

(ii) PRACTICAL SPEED : Whatever might be the permissible speed of a vehicle, in practice it depends upon many local factors. On one hand it depends upon the engineering factors like smoothness, straightness and width of road, frequency of branch roads, demarcation of lanes, engineering design of junctions etc. On the other, the practical speed of vehicle depends upon factors like, plying of slow moving vehicles (like rickshaw, rickshaw-van etc.), passengers trying to cross roads, number of vehicles running at any particular instant etc. In Dhaka city, efficiency of roads has been reduced severely due to (i) slow moving vehicles and (ii) total number of vehicles running at a time. These two are also the major causes of traffic jam.

REMOVAL OF RICKSHAW : In the past the authorities on several occasions declared the elimination of rickshaws on the assumption that the same would help in increasing the speed of the mechanized vehicles. Since rickshaw is the cheapest and easiest mode of transport of the poor and middle income people, the authorities endeavor did not come out successful. They however, have imposed ban on the plying of rickshaw on some major roads, usually known as VIP roads. The result however, was even worse because absence of rickshaw encouraged more cars to use these roads thus creating severe car-jam.

SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS :

In Bangladesh not all the projects are taken for the benefit of the people. Many a times those are taken to fulfill personal gains of the concerned people and financial need of the ruling parties. While this is one aspect of the root cause of many problems, the other aspect is the holding of responsible posts by less-intelligent people and dishonest people.

We cite here one good example. During the regime of the previous political government, the petrol driven auto-rickshaws, with their small and compact bodies were serving the need of transportation of the middle income people quite satisfactorily. The BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) government banned those in Dhaka city for alleged pollution and strangely allowed those in other cities of the country.

The vacuum due to their absence was later filled by importing CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) auto-rickshaws. The price of these vehicles was heavily increased in order to take care for 'party-fund'. Also the vehicles were distributed mostly among the party-workers. Because of their less number, it created severe transport crisis that led to exorbitant increase of fare. Thus it is seen that what the government did in program was in fact benefitting their party and people, with no concern for the city or the citizens.

We have already mentioned that in Bangladesh many crises take place because in some cases less-intelligent people are given responsible positions. We cite one example to prove it. Even a child knows that in any city the walkways or foot-paths are, by far the most important mode of transportation. In case of hazard (like earthquake) or emergency, or when no vehicle is available, foot-paths act as the last and only resort.

Naturally, in all the cities of the world the footpaths are maintained clean and obstruction-free. In Dhaka city, "guardians' waiting room" has been constructed right on the footpath in front of a girls' school, thus creating pains to millions of pedestrians. It may be really painful to learn that the person who created this obstruction is the Chief Engineer of Dhaka City Corporation. When we come to learn that a person with such level of intelligence can occupy a position with such great responsibility, we can only feel disheartened.

After road jam has taken extremely serious turn in Dhaka various organizations and experts have put forward some suggestions for the purpose of solving transportation problem and to eradicate traffic jam. We mention here the most discussed proposals.

(a) Metro or underground rail
(b) Monorail
(c) Elevated expressway
(d) Fly over
(e) Increase of large-bodied public transport
(f) Removal of old cars
(g) Imposing restriction on car ownership
(h) Introducing school bus
(i) Decentralization

To be continued......