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Amid the law enforcers' ongoing campaign to streamline Dhaka's traffic infrastructure, a few roads have worn a semblance of orderliness. The month-long drive started on September 05. With a number of still anarchic roads and vehicles on way to getting disciplined, chaos rules the roost in a lot of others. They include the incorrigibly law-flouting vehicles plying the roads.
Against these mixed conditions, strict enforcement of traffic rules has evoked adequate focus of the city people. At the same time many feel like harking back to the city's past. The time is not too distant. These bygone days of the past span the decades of the 1950s-1960s. Alongside pedalled rickshaws, the period witnessed Dhaka's roads accommodating scores of horse-drawn box carriages. The sprawling area around the then Fulbaria railway station used to remain filled with the echoes of the sounds of these vehicles. The city residents were dependent on these carriages to travel to distant places in the city. Despite the animal-drawn vehicle and the cycle rickshaw being two popular modes of transport, blaming them for any traffic chaos in the city hadn't yet gained currency. True, the numbers of transports back in those days were small. So were the roads. Dhaka had just two avenues and a handful of roads. These limited numbers of roads coping with the increasing pressure of transports would often witness short-duration jams. Though far from reaching the extent of a terrible traffic mess, the mini-gridlocks did cause inconveniences to the road users.
With the sudden increase in the number of Dhaka's motorised vehicles, the non-automated transports in Dhaka did not take long to get along with the former. In time, it proved to be a case of congenial co-existence. There were no ostracising of the slow-moving vehicles; the traffic authorities did not consider them as hindrances to Dhaka's growing into a bigger city. Although rickshaws still dominate the capital's streets, their predecessor -- the horse carriages, has been phased out as per the dictates of time. The authorities in the newly independent Bangladesh did not have to enforce laws to prohibit the anachronistic horse carriages. Of all the aspects of these vehicles' exit, one emerges with all its importance. The slow disappearance of horse carriages did not cause much trouble to their users. In fact, Dhaka's start of a new era sans horse-drawn vehicles went largely unnoticed.
The long-overdue venture which the traffic law enforcement authorities have embarked upon in Dhaka has been greeted by nods of popular approval. Apart from the relevant personnel concerned, auxiliary manpower has been pressed into service. Over the last week, the combined efforts of the magisterial authorities, the traffic police and the scouts and Red Crescent volunteers enacted quite a spectacle in Dhaka. However, to the utter dismay of many, the road situation remains ensconced in its earlier wild state. With buses picking up and dropping passengers in mid-roads, reckless jaywalking, vehicles moving on the wrong side etc continue to plague the roads. Moreover, the law enforcers' drive against errant vehicles has led scores of buses to suspend their operation. These buses include those without road permits, buses operated with unlicenced and underage drivers etc. Commuters in large number are seen thronging the stoppages to avail their buses. In short, the present state of the city roads is far from being normal. The recent student demonstrations for safe roads and the following assurances of bringing order to the traffic sector appear, on a large scale, to be missing the target. This murky state of things prompts many to conclude that the roads of Dhaka are still beyond lots of corrective measures.
As could be seen in many ambitious projects, the traffic sector reforms, too, have unwittingly gone through a few seemingly hasty steps. These steps appeared to have been taken without much in-depth study about their pros and cons, and their immediate impact on the city people. Banning auto-tempos, popularly known as lagunas or just tempos, from the Dhaka roads is one such step. As part of the initial reaction, the decision created panic and anxieties among the leguna travellers. However, in a review on September 09, the DMP's traffic division brought about some spaces of relief for the city's leguna users. In an attempt to relax the wholesale ban on the movement of these human hauliers, the authorities have allowed the tempos to move in the capital's feeder roads. The major roads and highways outside the city will remain off-limits to these light vehicles. In fact, except some law-defying ones, movement these legunas has long been confined chiefly to short-distance peripheral roads. Those roads remain normally free of gridlocks. Legunas, baby-taxies and cycle rickshaws ply these inner and connecting roads without causing inconvenience to traffic movements on the nearby major roads. The Farmgate-New Market tempo route, one of the oldest in the capital, mostly ply Green Road. It covers a short stretch of the busy Mirpur Road. But it has hardly been found creating traffic gridlocks. The same applies to the Hazaribagh-Azimpur-Gulistan leguna route in the city's southern part.
Apart from the general commuters of different ages, the female students from the colleges and schools in the greater Azimpur area comprise large segment of the leguna passengers. Few buses ply the Azimpur-Gulistan route. There is one operating on Dhamrai-Azimpur-Gulistan route and some local ones going up to Gulistan from the northern part of the city. The problem with these buses is they make their final halt long before reaching Gulistan. Thanks to it, passengers avoid these buses. Moreover, women, especially students, find them overcrowded and not passenger-friendly. Compared to these buses, legunas are comfortable and roomier. They are less prone to accidents. The sudden decision to take the legunas off service has caught their travellers off guard. Extreme forms of worries overtook them. Due to their exorbitant fares, rickshaws remain elusive to most of the fixed-income passengers. A similar picture prevails on many other routes. At present, 4000 legunas operate in the capital upon being registered with Bagladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA). They have received route permits from Regional Transport Committee for operating on 159 routes.
While enforcing the ban order for the legunas, the traffic division of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) singled out the tempos which ply the major roads. Among the other ills besetting the leguna service, a major one is its employing underage teens as 'helpers'. Some of the kids are found even on the drivers' seat. Leguna passengers have unanimously backed the step to ban child labour from this service. But almost all the regular tempo travellers were caught unawares over the decision to take these human hauliers off the street. Now that they are set to be in operation again will remove the worries which had taken hold of many commuters.
The authorities will do a great service to the urban public on accomplishing their declared task of freeing the Dhaka roads of errant vehicles and their operators. But in the interregnum, the commuters' sufferings, caused by an abrupt dearth of public transports, have also to be taken care of. Or else, the whole endeavour of disciplining the capital's traffic might end up being a mess. Few want to see Dhaka revert to its days of pervasive lawlessness; fewer still are prepared to remain haunted by occurrences of senseless fatalities on roads. At the same time, the lacunae that had crept into the whole traffic system deserve to be addressed effectively. Given the ground realities surrounding Dhaka's worsening traffic plight and the great overhaul it is set to undergo, phases of movement disruptions cannot be ruled out. Short spells of sufferings ought to be endured if the city people look forward to a livable modern metropolis, one which has a flawless traffic in place.
An obsolete or anachronistic system cannot remain in place for long. It has to disappear at some point of time. The once-dominant horse carriages have finally disappeared from the cityscape. They have been made to take their exit in phases. There was no need for a deadline. A similar fate might be awaiting the legunas and the other improvised vehicles. Their disappearance is just a matter of time.