Right activists on Friday urged the government to create scopes so that more public buses could ply in the capital and control the movement of private vehicles as well.
They also opposed the plan of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police to gradually ban the movement of rickshaws and CNG-run auto-rickshaws in the major city streets, demanding separate lanes on the roads for these small public vehicles.
The speakers said these at a roundtable jointly organised by the Save Environment Movement and Work for Better Bangladesh Trust at the National Press Club.
In his keynote paper the WBB Trust director, Syed Mahbubul Alam, said 95 per cent commuters of the capital resorted to rickshaws and buses or walked on foot while only around five per cent drove private cars.
Mentioning a recent study titled Pilot Bus Priority Corridor Pre-Feasibility Study, he said every day around 19 lakh people in the Dhaka city commuted by bus. It took a person 77 minutes on average to get on the bus, he added.
The speakers emphasised that an increased number of buses combined with a controlled movement of private cars was the only solution to the stifling traffic of the Dhaka city.
To ease the traffic congestion they further suggested revision in the existing bus routes with an addition of more such routes, repairs of pavements while building new ones, separate lanes for rickshaws, better training of drivers and better management of the movement of cargo vehicles on the city roads.
In addition, they suggested that the government, to discourage the use of private cars, should increase the price of the compressed natural gas and the parking fees, impose additional taxes on the owners of more than one private car and make more car parks.
Manjurul Ahsan Khan, president of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, Abu Naser Khan, chairman of the Save Environment Movement, Sarwar Jahan, president of the Institute of Planners, Monwar Hossain, former director of the Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority, columnist Kamal Lohani, lawmaker Mojibul Haque Chunnu and UNDP official Khandakar Niaz Rahman were present at the programme, among others.
Source : New Age
No comments:
Post a Comment