Putting a toll on Dhaka traffic

Traffic Management: Lesson 2: Like many other countries, so too in Bangladesh money is king. Sadly, in more and more cases, as governance goes awry the end (i.e. making money) is being used to justify any means.

Money has become precious because it is erroneously considered the root to all happiness – and even if happiness remains elusive, at least the big car, over priced real estate and perceived neighbour envy helps a lot of people try and sleep at night (which most probably find is as elusive as their happiness they expected mollycoddled in the moolah).

But I digress.

Unclogging Dhaka city intersections

Whose right of way? More like 'right away'

Traffic Management: Lesson 1

Today marks the first in a series of traffic management articles that I will undertake – designed for the streets of my hometown Dhaka (and executable in all the other cities across the nation).

Just as anyone stuck in traffic has done time immemorial – I too have studied the traffic around me and been honed into an 'expert' in traffic management.

But before I go any further, I want to add that the difference between me and most self-trained (and self-professed) 'idle' traffic management experts, is that I have never designed traffic management situations in my mind as a fancy pass time or just a product of a burst of sudden insight; only to be forgotten by the next red light for another 'light bulb' moment.

Taking the metro for a ride

I never understood my native country – or at least perhaps intricate corruption has brought imbalance to priorities – because the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has to ask the government to make a decision on approving the metro rail that JICA is paying for (albeit in the form of a soft loan).

One needs not be in Dhaka city for too long to realise that one of the biggest problems the city dwellers face (apart from power cuts and a deteriorating law & order situation) is perennial traffic gridlock. These are the sorts of choked roads that rob hours of productivity and literally costs the country millions in lost wages and spent petrol fumes each day.