Government officials, urban planners and transportation experts on Monday said that traffic management in the capital Dhaka would remain chaotic unless the system was built and controlled by professionals.
At a seminar, they also called for collaborative efforts by all concerned in building and sustaining a proper traffic management system for the city.聽
The seminar titled 鈥楢dvancing traffic management through signal control: operation, planning and policy perspective鈥� was organised by the Bangladesh Institute of Planners at its office in Dhaka.
In the backdrop of a manual traffic management amid inactive traffic signals in the city, two traffic signal systems are being piloted at present.
One of the pilots is being implemented by the Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority at seven crossings in the city, namely, InterContinental hotel, Banglamotor, Sonargaon hotel, Farmgate, Bijoy Sarani, Chief Adviser鈥檚 Office, and Jahangir Gate crossings.
Chief guest of the programme, DTCA executive director Neelima Akhter, said that they tackled many obstacles in installing signals at the seven crossings.
She urged the authorities concerned to introduce academic course on transport engineering as building proper traffic signal systems lay mainly with traffic engineers.
Professor SM Sohel Mahmud, of Accident Research Institute at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, alleged that over the years huge resources had been wasted for different traffic management initiatives for Dhaka city.
鈥楽o much money has been spent for traffic management,鈥� he said, stating that no one was held accountable for the resource wastage.聽聽
For improving traffic management, he urged the authorities concerned to put a cap on the number of new vehicles allowed to be registered each year, saying that the capacity of the traffic signals in the city was already exhausted.
At the seminar, a cofounder of TrafFix, a company that is implementing the other pilot on the traffic signal system in the city, also presented a paper when he blamed jaywalking as the main operational challenge in managing traffic in the city.
TrafFix, in collaboration with the Dhaka North City Corporation, has been implementing the pilot since mid-June this year at Gulshan-1 crossing.
TrafFix co-founder and Transport Professionals聽Alliance chief executive officer Mohammad Nurul Hassan also mentioned blocking of exit side, stopping of buses for letting passengers to board and alight at the crossing, parking of vehicles on the crossing, side roads near the crossing, violation of red light, driving in wrong direction, and poor visibility of vehicle number plates as other operational challenges.
Presenting another paper, TrafFix chief executive officer Md Ashraful Alum said that their system named 鈥楥ustomisable Integrated Traffic Management Solution鈥� would help the authorities ensure quick response and effective performance.
The seminar was attended, among others, by Roads and Highways Department chief engineer Syed Moinul Hasan, Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited managing director Faruque Ahmed, Dhaka Metropolitan Police joint commissioner (traffic) Abu Sufiyan Ahmed and Bangladesh Institute of Planners president Professor Adil Mohammed Khan.
