THE government plan on a bus route franchise to streamline public transports in Dhaka could clash with a similar programme that the transport owners’ association has taken up. This is worrying. The road transport adviser in December 2024 announced that the government would introduce company-based bus operation on nine routes in Dhaka on February 25. The Dhaka Road Transport Owners’ Association, meanwhile, on February 6 claimed that it launched a similar service with 2,610 buses from Azampur at Uttara, adding that it would also introduce the system on Mirpur, Gabtoli and Mohammadpur routes in late February. Keeping to the original plan, the goal of the government initiative was to bring all bus companies running on a route with valid permits under one umbrella. But parallel services, as transport experts suggest, would defeat the purpose of the bus route rationalisation, which is to prevent ill competition between bus operators that is often majorly blamed for fatal accidents.
The plan to rationalise bus routes in Dhaka was originally taken in 1997 under the Dhaka Urban Transport Project, which gained some momentum in 2015. The High Court, after the death of a student in a road accident involving two competing buses, in 2019 gave a directive to bring bus services in all metropolitan cities under the franchising system in six months. In 2021, a pilot route was introduced by the buses of Trans Silva Company and the Road Transport Authority under Dhaka Nagar Paribahan on Ghatar Char–Kanchpur route, but it soon failed as other private companies continued their services, with no government steps to keep them off the route. Officials of the Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority say that the initiative of the bus owners’ association is unauthorised, but the Road Transport Authority says that the owners’ association does not require permission as their buses already have a permit to run on the routes. The conflicting responses on the issue suggest that the authorities do not have an effective implementation plan. For a plan stalled for about three decades, precisely because of the resistance from the profit-seeking owners’ association, the government needs to address the unholy control that the bus companies have over the sector.
The government should, therefore, consult with all stakeholders, including transport owners and passengers’ associations so that the plan does not fall flat as it did in the past. It should consider the recommendation of transport experts that urged the government to reconsider the business model and bring the service under a separate state-owned company. Bus route rationalisation is an important step towards streamlining city public transports, but there are other issues that require a long-term plan and policy attention that does not seem to be the case with the interim government.
