Over half of the routes for the Dhaka city buses are now in inactive condition, said officials of Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority on Thursday.
At a seminar, they also said that many buses are running on the city routes neither receiving permission nor updating fitness.
Implementation of the bus route rationalisation project would bring a solution to the problem, they added.
The authority organised the programme at the DTCA Bhaban to share opinion with the members of the Reporters for Rail and Road.
The DTCA deputy transport planner Dhrubo Alam presented a paper on the authority鈥檚 activities.
According to the paper, currently in the Dhaka metropolitan city there are 388 routes for the city buses and currently 250 or 64.43 per cent of these are in inactive condition which is creating disorder on roads.
The official data also showed that, on the 128 active routes, 7,091 buses are running of which 992 have no fitness.
Out of the total buses running in the capital, 3,427 are running on the routes designated for them, 2,018 are running on other routes with approval for running on some other routes and 1,646 buses are running without any permission for the routes.
The DTCA however observed that actually, 3,500 to 4,000 buses run on city roads.
The officials said that all city buses will run on 42 routes under 22 companies and in nine clusters to bring discipline to Dhaka鈥檚 mass transport system under the Bus Route Rationalisation project.
On November 11, the project office took a decision that the transport companies can apply to operate under Nagar Paribahan, an initiative under the project, until November 30.
On Thursday, different activities of the authority were also described, including relocation of the inter-district bus terminals from the capital, preparing the Revised Strategic Transport Plan and coordinating the transport related projects in the city.
The authority also introduced the Rapid Pass to introduce the One Card for All Transport system in the public sector, including metro rail, buses under Bus Rapid Transit system, Bangladesh Railway, passenger vessels under Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation and other government run public transports.
While chairing the programme, the DTCA executive director Neelima Akhter said that coordination among all stakeholders are necessary to bring back order in the sector.
The seminar and opinion sharing was attended by the authority officials, consultants working with the authority and members of the Reporters for Rail and Road, among others.
