RESIDENTS of Dhaka appear to be headed for a transport system completely in lawlessness as the road regime worsens riding on the indolence, deliberate or unintentional, of the authorities. Chaos on the road, which had often made the headlines for years, appears to have intensified largely after the August 2024 political changeover, when law enforcement declined, and the government has yet to effectively attend to the troubling issues. Experts say that opportunist quarters 鈥� allegedly the people of the Awami League, overthrown from the government in the August 2024 uprising, who might have joined other political parties 鈥� may have been behind the problems, but they believe that the incompetence, miserable maintenance and poor oversight of the authorities are at the heart of the problems, noting that the government has failed to put the road regime in order. The latest menace that has gripped the roads of Dhaka is countless unauthorised battery-run rickshaws. Such rickshaws hit the city road as 2024 began, flouting rules. The government in May 2024, however, walked back its decision to keep battery-run rickshaws off major city road.
The High Court on November 19 ordered a ban on battery-run rickshaws in the city, but the Appellate Division on November 25, however, stayed the High Court ban and allowed the rickshaws on city roads for now. The government is also to launch franchise-based bus operation, under a route rationalisation project, on nine city routes on February 25, but the Dhaka Road Transport Owners鈥� Association on February 6 introduced a similar service on one route, which is said to have already reduced the number of buses on the route. The private initiative appears to have marred the public efforts. Motorcycle menace has been an added problem, especially in that many motorcyclists run unlicensed, indulge in rash driving and rampantly breach rules. Road Transport Authority statistics show that in 2024, there were 4.58 million registered motorcycles, but there were only 3.78 million driving licences. Besides, there are unregistered motorcycles. Added to all this are the old problems of the illegal parking of vehicles on the road in the absence of dedicated parking space, malfunctioning traffic signals, which are manual, no initiative to make functional the digital signal system that was first introduced in 2001鈥�2002, rash driving, a worrying competition between bus services or picking up and dropping passengers anywhere on the road, wrong-lane driving, over-speeding, etc, that the authorities have miserably failed to attend to.
Whilst the government should decisively attend to the issues to put the road regime effectively in order, it should also be stringent about the enforcement of rules and regulations that govern the transport sector.
