The Dhaka Metropolitan Police will start filing video cases against those vehicles that cross speed of 100-kilometre per hour on the Dhaka Elevated Expressway for speeding from February 21.
The initiative of filing cases based on video surveillance was taken to prevent road crashes on the expressway, said officials of the First Dhaka Elevated Expressway Company Limited, the implementing agency of the Dhaka Elevated Expressway project.
If three speeding cases are filed against any vehicle, the vehicle will be blacklisted to prevent it from running on the expressway.
A proposal was also sent to the Bangladesh Bridge Authority, the government body supervising the project, to increase the speed limit on the expressway to 80 kilometres per hour from the existing limit of 60 kilometres per hour.
The national highest speed limit is 80 kilometres per hour in the country.
The FDEE鈥檚 manager for operations and maintenance retired captain Hasib Hasan Khan made the announcement at a press conference held at the FDEE office in the capital on Saturday.
The 46.73-kilometre expressway project will connect Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport with the Dhaka-Chattogram Highway at Kutubkhali near Jatrabari.
Till now, the project鈥檚 airport-Farmgate section and the exit ramp at Karwan Bazar, in front of the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation, are opened to traffic.
Hasib Hasan Khan said that till now 10 road accidents took place on the expressway for over speeding while a vehicle with a speed of 197 kilometres per hour hit the median of the expressway on January 27.
As per the FDEE, daily on average about 400 vehicles run over 100 kilometres per hour on the expressway.
Hasib said that the police would fix the amount of the fines and other things related to the video cases.
At the request of the DMP, they would share a connection of their central command centre to the DMP office for letting them monitoring the expressway鈥檚 video cameras, he further said.
They will also preserve the number of the blacklisted vehicles for stopping these at the toll plazas at the entry points, he continued.聽
He said that they had done this as most of the vehicles ran over 60 kilometres per hour on the expressway.
The official said that since inauguration due to over heat vehicles, puncture of vehicle wheels, and out of fuel, users of the expressway, especially the airport-bound passengers, suffered the most.
Their patrol teams help these people, he said.
In January this year, engine problems were seen in 90 vehicles, tyres of 51 vehicles burst and 20 vehicles went out of fuel, the company officials said, adding that in the same month 66,000 vehicles used the expressway daily on average.
From September 2023 to this January monthly on average 12,72,217 vehicles used the expressway.聽
At the press conference, a guideline for using the expressway was also shared.
The event was attended also by the FDEE manager for maintenance Tony Zhaohui.
The expressway project was undertaken in 2011 to reduce traffic congestion in the capital and save time and money.
The project is scheduled to be completed by June next year with an estimated cost of Tk 8,940 crore.