Why Dhaka’s topography warrants transport projects’ fine-tuning
- Mahmudul Islam
- 14th October, 2023 11:49:
Ancient Rome during the Roman Empire had a vast series of major roads and paths, all leading to the centre of the city in some way. The idiom “All roads lead to Rome” originated from there. If all roads literally led to Rome in the ancient period, then all roads in modern Dhaka virtually lead to traffic congestion. No matter which Dhaka road you choose, you are highly likely to get stuck in intolerable traffic jams, which will significantly slow down your travelling speed.
This has become part of the reality of living in Dhaka for its more than 20 million residents, although the city has been blessed with big/mega transport infrastructure projects over the years. Eight flyovers have so far been built. Constructed at a cost of Tk113.52 crore, Mohakhali flyover was the first one that opened to traffic in 2004. All these projects were aimed at reducing traffic congestion as well as giving people a faster and smoother travel experience. However, the result has been a far cry. What went wrong? A new study says the problem lies elsewhere. It says Bangladeshi cities, compared to those in other poor countries, have some “inherent limitations” that are responsible for slower travelling speed.
The major limitation is topography. Bangladeshi cities have “challenging topography” marked by the presence of more water bodies, says the study titled “The fast, the slow, and the congested: Urban transportation in rich and poor countries” and published by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research. It says relative to cities in other poor countries with a below-median income per capita, the ones in Bangladesh are crossed by 116% more water bodies, accounting for 32% of the speed variance. That is why the ability of Bangladesh to improve its urban transportation outcomes is “severely constrained” by this city attribute that is hard to change. The study ranked Dhaka the slowest among 1,200 cities in 152 countries. Mymensingh and Chattogram were named the 9th and the 12th slowest cities, respectively.One way of interpreting the study findings is that the government would not necessarily be able to reduce traffic congestion and increase speed just by building big/mega transport infrastructures. If topography, particularly water bodies, is the determining factor in how fast or slow Bangladeshi cities are, such infrastructures will have insignificant impacts on improving the traffic situation and overall transport outcomes, unless they directly address the topographic challenges. Canadian transportation geographer Jean-Paul Rodrigue explains that topography can complicate, postpone, or prevent transport activities and investment, with physical constraints acting as absolute and relative barriers to mobility. Land transportation tends to be denser in areas with limited topography, he adds.
This has implications for Dhaka. The city was once crisscrossed by a robust network of water channels, with rivers and other water bodies playing an important role in its spatial development and liveability. Because of local geo-climate and water-based spatial development, Dhaka was even known as the Venice of the East. The face of the city has markedly changed since then. A 2019 study by the Bangladesh Institute of Planners said Dhaka had lost 36% of its water bodies to earth filling since the 2010 Detailed Area Plan was published. Despite this gradual decline, the new study has identified water bodies as the key reason for slow speed in Dhaka and other Bangladeshi cities.
But this inherent topographical limitation is not exclusive to Bangladesh. There are cities in other parts of the world that have similar or more challenging topographical features but still have higher speeds. This means Bangladesh can also get around the problem. Dr Prottoy Akbar, a Bangladeshi academic and the lead author of the study, agrees. In an email, he told the Daily Sun Bangladeshi cities are not doomed to slow speeds forever due to their topographic settings.
Giving the examples of Miami, Osaka, and Rotterdam, he said, “Many cities in richer countries are equally, if not more, constrained by large amounts of urban water bodies and have built their transportation networks around these constraints. Cities in Bangladesh just have not adapted as well.”
“Our findings about topography are meant to highlight where there is scope for improvement,” added Prottoy, an assistant professor in the economics department at Aalto University in Finland.
Dr Md Hadiuzzaman, a civil engineering professor at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, also emphasises adaptation. He wants to consider the presence of more water bodies in Bangladeshi cities a blessing instead of a constraint. Dhaka’s high road traffic load could have largely been reduced by building water transportation systems to utilise the water bodies, he says.“But those have not been utilised. Instead, many of our rivers and canals have been subjected to grabbing and pollution. Over the last 30 years, around 50 canals in Dhaka have disappeared. All this has altered the city’s topography to some extent.”
He notes that topography is not limited to natural water bodies only. Man-made structures, buildings, and land management systems are also part of it. “In that respect too, we have big weaknesses in our topography. The fact that Dhaka is an unplanned city has added to the problem.”
The professor further explained that big commercial and residential buildings had been erected on both sides of Dhaka roads without assessing their impacts on traffic. There are no arterial and major roads as such in Dhaka. Moreover, the city’s main roads fall short of the required standards and have connected to side roads here and there.
Hadiuzzaman is not as optimistic as Prottoy when it comes to the question of whether Dhaka would remain a slow city forever due to its topography. He thinks there is a big possibility that slow speed would become a permanent feature of the Bangladeshi capital unless a “controlling factor” is enforced.
“It is now impossible to change the city’s topography. We cannot build major roads that would meet all the required criteria either. The only option we have is population control, which we can do through decentralisation,” he told the Daily Sun.
Decentralisation could be done either by relocating the capital elsewhere or moving the administrative offices that need not be in Dhaka, according to Hadiuzzaman. Once that happens, Dhaka would be less populated, which would lessen the high traffic loads on its roads. The result would be an increase in travelling speed.
His view is congruent with Prottoy’s study, which identified three inherent limitations of Bangladeshi cities. Apart from topography, higher population and fewer major roads considerably slow down cities in Bangladesh. Compared to cities in other poor countries, those in Bangladesh are 40% more populous (with similar areas) and have 42% fewer major roads. Higher population and fewer major roads account for 23% and 20% of the speed difference, respectively.
As altering topography and constructing proper major roads now will be like boiling the ocean, controlling population is the only way to go and decentralisation is an effective method to this end. Indonesia is taking a similar approach, moving its capital to the rainforests of Borneo Island from overpopulated Jakarta to diversify the centres of economic and political power. In addition to Hadiuzzaman, many other experts have also recommended Dhaka’s decentralisation time and again.
However, the government has not trodden that path much. Instead, it continues to implement big/mega transport projects in Dhaka as part of its long-term development agenda. It inaugurated metro rail in late 2022 and Dhaka Elevated Expressway in September this year. Metro rail has definitely made travel faster, enabling passengers to travel between Uttara and Agargaon in just 10 minutes. But Hadiuzzaman says metro travel time is only one part of a passenger’s total travel duration that does not include the first- and last-mile connectivity time. If the passenger’s travelling speed remains slow from his home to the metro station and again from the station where he gets off to his final destination, the intermediate high-speed travel would not be of much help.
Similarly, people can expect to travel between Farmgate and Kawla in around 10 minutes if they take the expressway, but the time increases during peak hours due to additional traffic pressure. Besides, speed reduces again when travellers face the notorious traffic jams on the roads after getting off the expressway. Hadiuzzaman described the big speed difference between the expressway and the main road as a short circuit. He noted that congestion could often be seen even on flyovers.
This reflects Prottoy’s study findings that faster urban travel speed is a robust feature of economic development, but road infrastructure in some contexts is not the main reason why countries or cities are slow. “It is true that Dhaka has been working towards expanding its infrastructure. So perhaps we will soon start to see differences. But there is still a long way to go to catch up while keeping up with the needs of a growing urban population,” Prottoy told the Daily Sun.
Hadiuzzaman, on the other hand, has a critical view of the big infrastructures. He says building flyovers and expressways without addressing gridlocks on the roads beneath them is like facilitating gridlocks further. He is also of the view that the mega transport projects have proven counterproductive in many cases, reiterating that no country in the world has succeeded in reducing congestion and increasing speed only by constructing infrastructures.
What is the solution then? Strong policies and their enforcement, Hadiuzzaman asserts. Firstly, there should be a policy to control the types of vehicles that will be allowed on Dhaka roads. He says Dhaka perhaps is the only city where 18 categories of vehicles run on the same roads, including motorised and non-motorised vehicles, slow- and high-speed vehicles, rickshaws, vans, etc. He recommends allowing only motorised vehicles on main roads while non-motorised ones should run on branch roads.
“Secondly, we have to pull unfit vehicles and also those that have had their economic life expired. Next, the number of private vehicles, including cars and motorbikes, has to be reduced and that of high-quality public transports, air-conditioned buses for example, has to be increased concurrently,” said Hadiuzzaman.
The transport expert also emphasised route rationalisation, saying it will bring roads and public transport operations under discipline. “The combined effect of all this would be an increase in travelling speeds in the whole network, including on both roads and mega infrastructures. This will create a win-win situation in terms of investing in mega projects and enjoying their facilities.”
If Hadiuzzaman’s recommendations and Prottoy’s study findings are anything to go by, the government’s urban transport development programmes need fine-tuning to address the topographic and other pertinent challenges. Dhaka otherwise may continue to rank as the slowest, or one of the slowest, cities where all roads would keep leading to tailbacks. Prottoy in his email described Dhaka as an outlier in terms of how little major roads it has or how limited its mass transit network is compared to similarly populated cities around the world, such as Jakarta, Mexico City, Delhi, and Cairo. If the government fine-tunes its transport programmes, Dhaka could be an outlier in terms of relieving ever-worsening congestion and increasing travelling speed despite having more water bodies, faster-growing population, and fewer major roads than cities in other poor countries.