The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Transport experts and environmentalists at a roundtable in the city urged the Government to provide adequate facilities for pedestrians including improving conditions of footpaths and earmarking frequent street-level crossings.

They also urged the Government to improve conditions of public transit and fuel-free transport like bicycles and rickshaws and to introduce separate bus lanes and other priority measures for existing public transit.

Introducing a knowledge-based and participatory transport planning process involving all stakeholders including the most deprived section of the society could help to strengthen Strategic Transport Plan (STP) and a positive transport plan for Dhaka city.

This was urged at the roundtable on 'Environment-friendly, fuel-efficient and pro-people transportation system: Situation in Dhaka’ organised by Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA) was held at the National Press Club yesterday.

Prof Muzaffar Ahmed, President of BAPA, presided over the roundtable, while Dr Mahabubul Bari, Senior Assistant Manager of Transport for London in UK, presented a keynote paper.

The speakers said the government is now planning to build an underground metro. Although this is positive in the sense of recognising the importance of public transit, metro is an extremely expensive and demanding system, requiring enormous amounts of money to build and operate and a large and steady supply of electricity.

The plan of building metro in the STP to allocate over 63 per cent resources to metro, on the assumption that eight per cent of trips will occur by that mode, represents an enormous inequity. It is difficult to imagine the justification for spending the majority of the money on a mode that will account for less than 10 per cent of all trips, they said.

The idea that the metro budget can be reduced drastically is more likely motivated by politics than by economic realities. Such projects often vastly exceed the anticipated budget and insufficient funding will guarantee a system that will be of little use to anyone, the keynote paper said.

They urged the Government to ensure high quality rail service for inter-city travel, including maintaining Kamalapur Rail Station in its existing location and expanding rail networks and develop improved rickshaws that are more comfortable for passengers and easier on the pullers and provide licenses for all mechanically fit rickshaws, they said.

They also urged the government to reduce fuel use by providing government officials with staff bus services, reduce parking spaces inside government office premises and provide economic incentives for those who walk or cycle to work and develop a hierarchical transport model suite for the greater Dhaka Metropolitan Area for evolution of different land use and transport development options.

Road-based public transit, be it tram or bus rapid transit, would cost a fraction of metro to build and operate, and thus for the same budget, could cover far more of the city and operate with lower fares and subsidies, benefiting more of the population, the speakers said.