Randomly pick and drop by public transports, markets adjacent to the highway, illegal car parking on road and encroachment of roadside footpath causes huge traffic and huge suffering to mass people following the long tailback on both sides of Dhaka-Aricha highway at Savar Bazar Bus Stand area in Savar, on the outskirts of the capital.
“We are constantly working to free the road as its one of the most important highways of the country, but some issues there which causes the heavy traffic besides ongoing roads construction works also interrupting vehicle movement as well”, Abdullahel Kafee, Additional Superintendent (Crime) of Dhaka Zilla Police told The Bangladesh Post.
It was seen while visiting the area, Nabinagar bound vehicle movement slows down while its reaches Thana stand area as public transport randomly picking up and dropping its passenger even standing into the middle of highway at Savar, besides local Leguna stand, people movement for roadside market and the shopping malls, illegal car parking also interrupting the road flow, and each vehicle has to take at least an hour-long time to pass the 1.2-kilometre path and the same scenario on the opposite Dhaka bound side.
On Tuesday, Md. Karim, an ambulance driver who also was stacked at the area with emergency patients alleged, he was stacked into the traffic for the last 20 minutes and seems he had to take at least more than 20 to 30 minutes to pass the area.
Abdullahel Kafee said that road management basically depends on three matters. First of all is education, second is engineering, and the third is enforcement. Education is needed to know how one should move on the road, where to stop and where not, engineering for suitable road structure, and enforcement to enforce the law. No police are enforcing the law, but people still do not maintain road discipline. Pedestrian cross the highway randomly, passengers raise their hands at the middle of the roads to stop public transport, transport workers also denying roads rules, and all these together discipline yet to return.“We, Police are however constantly working to free the highway, but all have to play responsible role to return discipline on the road, otherwise, none of any initiative will works if we people stay away from maintaining discipline”,
Hazi Abdul Goni, Mayor of Savar Municipality said that hawkers are operating their business grabbing the roadside land, causes pedestrians to move to the road instead of footpath. So now to solve the issues, authorities have taken an initiative to build a hawkers market and to shift the hawkers from the highway, therefore authorities already selected several projects in municipal area and applied to the ministry to allocated the land , so that municipality can set up a hawkers market there to free the Savar Bazar Bus Stand area”.
On other hand, responding to the question of ongoing roads widening construction work, Maruf Hossain, Deputy Divisional Engineer of Road and Highway said they hoping that the current heavy traffic situation at Savar area will no longer after completing the ongoing road widening work as the new development work designed with service lane, separate main lane, bus bay. So that none of any public transport can be able to park their vehicle on the main lane, and nobody can take U-turn randomly anywhere. “Hopefully the development work will be finished within this fiscal year”, Maruf added.