Traffic in Dhaka: a true Nightmare


Do not let others ruin your day, go out on the roads of Dhaka and ruin it yourself. Lawless driving, reckless driving you name it, its abundance is as clear as the light of the day in the infamous roads of Dhaka city. Paired with the insanely hot and humid weather of Bangladesh, traveling in vehicles on roads is nothing short of a nightmare.





As a student who has had to rely on transportation to reach school and now to university, it is not a rare scenario for half of my days to get wasted in traffic. To put it into perspective, it takes me around 20 minutes to travel a distance of 5 kilometers on Fridays when the offices and schools are closed. However, that's not the case for the other 6 days of the week where it would take me over an hour to travel the same distance. Even after the construction of multiple flyovers throughout the city, there seems to be hardly any progress. On the flip side, traffic jam almost always reaches halfway on the flyovers, which is ironic considering they were built for the exact opposite purpose.

On the surface, the root cause of traffic in Dhaka could be the over-saturation of vehicles that dwell on the roads. However, that's not the case. It's not difficult to identify that a large percentage of vehicles do not follow the laws while driving. Overtaking on a jam-packed road, driving the wrong way, driving in the wrong lane, etc. greatly contributes to the problem. A few years back, the government took the initiative to install traffic lights on every road which seems like a good initiative until you realize they are nothing more than a decoration piece now. Even though prominent media like the Daily Star reports these issues daily, the government, let alone the people, hardly seem to take any positive initiative to improve the situation. In fact, it is so bad that ambulances and fire trucks fail to reach their destinations on time, resulting in irreversible losses.

Traffic jams aside, walking has also become incredibly risky as vehicles do not drive safely. Motorcycles start traveling on the pavement during the traffic, buses race against each other like it's an F1 race putting the lives of pedestrians at risk. Hundreds of innocent lives are lost for this very reason. Even though this problem is not only limited to buses, they are the more noticeable ones.



From the looks of it, traveling will not become safer or easier anytime soon as most of the drivers themselves are not educated and trained enough. Everyone tries to cut corners to reach their destinations quicker but ends up causing issues on the roads. There have been no real efforts but the government to develop and ensure safer roads. A few years back, there was a huge protest by students, demanding safer roads which yielded no results even after so many years. Unless the government gets serious about implementing stricter traffic laws, a proper road, let alone safer roads might remain a dystopian dream for the Bangladeshi people.

Mohammad Abtahi Addin Wasi
ID: 24101143



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