Widening landing areas of Dhaka expressway

A section of Bangladesh's first-ever elevated expressway is open to traffic. Vehicles have started running on the long-awaited Dhaka Elevated Expressway's Kawla-Farmgate route. And now it takes less than 15 minutes for a vehicle to cross this 11.5-kilometre section, a journey that would normally take more than one hour on the traditioal roads. For congested Dhaka city, it is like a dream-come-true. The dream of reaching from the capital's one end to the other in around 10 minutes is, however, turning into a nightmare when the commuters try to get down from the expressway. Though vehicular movement on the expressway is smooth, congestion can be seen at all toll points of the expressway as the process is manual and slow. And when someone starts landing from the expressway what they find is an old congested Dhaka city. Hundreds of vehicles coming down from the expressway have to struggle hard to pass through narrow roads beneath the expressway. Farmgate and Kawla are two such places that have been experiencing severe gridlocks since the launch of the expressway. Not just these two places, it seems the entire Dhaka city is facing more traffic jams nowadays possibly because of the expressway.

The long-cherished expressway has been constructed to ease Dhaka's nagging congestion and save people's valuable workhours. But now it appears the expressway, itself, is contributing to the city's traffic jams. Gridlocks are created on a regular-basis at the landing points at Farmgate, Mohakhali, Kakoli and Kawla areas due to heavy pressure of vehicles using the Dhaka Elevated Expressway. Moreover, now it takes more time for a vehicle to cross a traffic signal than before. Some people have taken to their social media platforms to share their experience about how they have to suffer  as they now need more time than usual to reach their destinations. They are also  pointing their fingers at the  expressway saying that it has increased more pressure of vehicles on the city roads and created more traffic jams.

Dhaka city has a total of seven flyovers. But they have failed miserably to resolve the problem of  traffic jam. Take the case of Moghbazar flyover. The road below is so narrow that it cannot accommodate the entire traffic coming down from the flyover. In many countries in the world, elevated roads are constructed to bypass a city rather than land within a city. Dhaka elevated expressway does not seem to serve that purpose. Elevated expressways or flyovers can never be a complete solution to traffic gridlock in cities like Dhaka as they increase congestion at landing points. The benefits of having an expressway cannot be fully realised unless we widen its landing areas. Before constructing any elevated road in the future, building wider landing spaces should be taken into consideration. The toll collection system should also be upgraded and made automatic. There should be a move to replace toll plazas with cameras that could read the number plates of vehicles and automatically deduct toll from the linked bank accounts of vehicle owners.

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