The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mahabubul Bari, Debra Efroymson

(From previous issue)

Whether net economic benefit of previous rickshaw ban in the Mirpur Road Demonstration Corridor was positive?: The economic impact of fuel free transport ban on the demonstration corridor has been quite devastating; even DUTB's figures indicate an enormous net loss. Revised figures suggest a colossal loss as high as Tk 1.52 billion per year for the demonstration corridor. Not a single item produced any positive benefit.

Although banning rickshaws means that many former rickshaw passengers will now have to travel by foot, including to access buses, absolutely nothing was done to improve the situation of pedestrians. The banning of FFT in the demonstration corridor has deteriorated accessibility of the majority of road users by cutting access to side roads, destroying the continuity of the transport system, and hampering door-to-door mobility of passengers.

The fuel free transport ban has been proved to be highly regressive in economic terms, with 83% of the road users becoming the ultimate losers as against only 1%, those who shifted from rickshaws to cars, emerging victorious.

Can fuel free transport ban ensure social equity and protect the right of the most vulnerable sections of the society?: Any city development initiative should contribute positively to social equity and protect the right of the most vulnerable sections of the society. On the contrary the fuel free transport ban created serious social exclusion problems by depriving the most vulnerable section of the society like women, children, the elderly, the disabled and the infirm of a feasible mode of transport.

Again, the initiative has generated undue advantages to a tiny minority of the urban elite, that is, car owners, by allocating them absolute priority in all spheres of the city transport system at the expense of mobility and convenience for the majority of the road users, i.e. pedestrians and rickshaw passengers. In the demonstration corridor, cars now make up only 8.5% of all trips but they occupy 54% of road space. Moreover, undue privilege to cars has also been manifested in terms of providing them with unlimited space for parking free of cost, giving preferential access along road links, ensuring uninterrupted movement at pedestrian crossings and giving undue long green times at traffic signals, etc.

Above all, the FFT ban project shattered the life of the vulnerable rickshaw pullers and operators by reducing their income by 32-41% despite being forced to adopt longer working hours, caused them to take less food, and above all deprived them from their fundamental right of earning a living by a legal means.

Knowledge-based and participatory decision-making approach for transport planning for Dhaka City: Given the complexity of the enterprise and the fact that transport and urban planning have significant effects on the economic and overall well-being of a city's residents, it is important not to undertake any important transport policy initiative, such as fuel free transport ban arbitrarily. It is high time to institutionalise a knowledge-based and participatory decision-making process for the Dhaka City. It is a matter of deep regret that important transport policy decisions are being taken without conducting any knowledge-based analysis by involving people who do not have proper training on transport or urban planning process. In this connection lessons can be learnt from the arbitrary decision making process of STP where a top-down planning process was adopted by involving a number of part-timers mainly drawn from the section of the urban elite without wider participation of major stakeholders and socially deprived sections of the city. As is always the case in such scenarios, the tendency to allocate resources rather arbitrarily for car-friendly (pro-rich) and capital-intensive projects becomes evidently clear from the STP approach. The experiences of different cities of Brazil prior to participatory budgeting were more or less similar, when decisions regarding urban developments were the exclusive right only for the elite and the powerful. Participatory budgeting, which has been in operation in Brazil since 1989 (Souza 2001), is emerging as an innovative urban development management theme with enormous potential to support cities in the adoption of socially integrated, inclusive, accessible, transparent, participatory and accountable urban governance and management, with a view to ensuring equitable and sustainable urban development. There is no reason why such approaches could not be institutionalised and integrated with appropriate knowledge-based process ensuring people-oriented transport developments.

In this connection, some of the major recent transport policy decisions is worth discussion. The government has recently undertaken an initiative to build 52 kilometres of subway in Dhaka City on commercial basis using private sector financing. A similar initiative on building of a system of elevated expressway under a commercial venture is probably also in the agenda. Any move to build a mass transit system for Dhaka City is long overdue and welcome. However, there are number of issues which demand especial attention prior to undertaking major policy initiatives as follows:

· It might not be appropriate to build a mass transit system as a commercial enterprise under a profit or loss system. A profit making public transit system would likely to be expensive and beyond the reach of the ordinary people despite some fancy claims from the investor. A profit making enterprise would have an adverse impact on social equity and integration. Such a transport system will definitely deny the most vulnerable section of the society about the right to accessibly and mobility. The very objective of the development of mass transit system, i.e. to provide an affordable public transport system for the majority will be defected if it is run on a commercial basis.

· Despite some over optimistic claims, the underground metro will not be able to solve the transport problem of the Dhaka city on its own. Without a proper integrated demand and supply management approach it is unlikely that only an underground metro will solve the transport problem of Dhaka City.

· It is essential that any mass transit system, such as underground metro, should be integrated appropriately with other transport sustainable transport modes, like pedestrians and FFT to make it effective.

· The bitter experience of STP planning process should not negate the need for implementing a well-integrated mass transit system under a knowledge-based and participatory transport planning process.

· The implementation of car incentive project like elevated expressway system would likely to eat up some of the potential benefits of the proposed mass transit system. Current anti-FFT and pro-car transport initiatives would likely to be counter-productive for the development a sustainable transport system for Dhaka City.

Concluding Remarks: The truism "history repeats itself" applies to those who ignore the lessons of the past and insist on forging ahead, committing the same mistakes, and experiencing the same results. It is hoped that, city authority will learn form the mistakes of the Mirpur Road Demonstration project and try to assign due importance of FFT as it deserves. Given the small modal share of autos and the many problems they cause, there should be no provision for creating more auto-only roads within urban areas, and all existing auto-only roads should be converted into mixed-use roads by properly integrating public transit, FFT and fuel-dependent transport (FDT).

Again, while developing mass transit system for a mega city like Dhaka, efforts should be made to develop an affordable system for the majority under a well-integrated multi-modal system. It would be rather unfortunate to develop a mass transit system mainly as a profit making enterprise.

Given the complexity of the transport planning process and the fact that transport and urban planning have significant effects on the economic and overall well-being of a city's residents, it is important adopting a knowledge-based and participatory approach involving all segment of the stakeholders. Such participatory planning process should take into account not only technical issues about feasibility and efficiency, but also the likely effects of policies on mobility, accessibility, and quality of life for all those affected, with a particular focus on vulnerable groups, those most likely to be left out of, and highly affected by, the existing planning process.

References: It is important to have an open discussion to explore the scientific validity of the further extensions of fuel free transport bans and the justification of the building a mass transit mainly as a profit making enterprise under the perspectives of sustainable transport development in the Dhaka City.

DUTP (2006), "Impact Assessment of DUTP: After Project", Final Report submitted to Dhaka Transport Coordination Board, by DHV Consultants BV, the Netherlands, Japan Overseas Co., Ltd., Japan, Finnroad Oy, Finland, Operation Research Group, India, SARM Associates Ltd., Bangladesh, Desh Upodesh Ltd., Bangladesh, DevConsultants Ltd., Bangladesh in Dhaka Urban Transport Project (DUTP), Dhaka, February 2006.

HDRC (2004), "After Study on the Impact of Mirpur Demonstration Corridor Project (Gabtoli-Russell Square)" Report prepared for Dhaka Transportation Coordination Board (DTCB), Human Development Research Centre, August 2004, Dhaka

Souza, C. (2001) "Participatory budgeting in Brazilian cities: limits and possibilities in building democratic institutions." Environment & Urbanization, Vol. 13 No 1, April 2001.

(The writer is transport specialist, UK)

(Concluded)