transport planning for Dhaka City
Given the complexity of the enterprise and the fact that transport
and urban planning have significant effects on the economic and
overall well-being of a city's residents, it is important not to
undertake any important transport policy initiative, such as a ban
on fuel-free transport, arbitrarily. It is high time to
institutionalise a knowledge-based and participatory decision-making
process for Dhaka City.
It is a matter of deep regret that important transport policy
decisions are being taken without conducting any knowledge-based
analysis, instead involving people who do not have proper training
on transport or the urban planning process. In this connection,
lessons can be learnt from the arbitrary decision-making process of
STP, where a top-down planning process was adopted by involving a
number of part-timers, mainly drawn from the urban elite, without
wider participation of major stakeholders and socially deprived
sections of the city. As is always the case in such scenarios,
resources were allocated arbitrarily for car-friendly and capital-
intensive projects.
The experiences of different cities of Brazil prior to participatory
budgeting were more or less similar, when decisions regarding urban
developments were the exclusive right only for the elite and the
powerful. Participatory budgeting, which has been in operation in
Brazil since 1989 (Souza 2001), is emerging as an innovative urban
development management theme with enormous potential to support
cities in the adoption of socially integrated, inclusive,
accessible, transparent, participatory and accountable urban
governance and management, with a view to ensuring equitable and
sustainable urban development. There is no reason why such
approaches could not be institutionalised and integrated with
appropriate knowledge-based processes, thereby ensuring people-
oriented transport developments.
In this connection, some of the major recent transport policy
decisions are worth discussion. The government has recently
undertaken an initiative to build 52 kilometres of subway in Dhaka
City on a commercial basis using private sector financing. A
similar initiative on building of an elevated expressway under a
commercial venture is probably also in the agenda. Any move to build
a mass transit system for Dhaka City is long overdue and welcome.
However, there are a number of issues which demand especial
attention prior to undertaking major policy initiatives, as follows:
• It might not be appropriate to build a mass transit system
as a commercial enterprise under a profit or loss system. A profit-
making public transit system would likely be expensive and beyond
the reach of the ordinary people, despite the unfounded claims from
the investor. A profit-making enterprise would have an adverse
impact on social equity and integration. Such a transport system
would deny the most vulnerable sections of the society the right to
accessibility and mobility. The very objective of the development of
a mass transit system, i.e. to provide an affordable public
transport system for the majority, will be lost if it is run on a
commercial basis.
• Without a proper integrated demand-and-supply management
approach, it is highly unlikely that only an underground metro will
solve the transport problems of Dhaka City.
• Before proceeding with planning of the underground metro,
serious feasibility issues need to be addressed including cost
(underground metro is about 100 times more expensive to build than
bus rapid transit), the need for large and ensured quantities of
electricity, and issues of digging sufficiently deep in a flood-
prone city.
• Given the high cost of an underground system, a thorough
cost-benefit analysis should be conducted to explore alternate, much
less expensive and complicated public transit modes, such as trams
and Bus Rapid Transit.
• It is essential that any mass transit system, such as
underground metro, should be integrated appropriately with other
sustainable transport modes, like pedestrians and fuel-free
transport, to make it effective.
• The bitter experience of the STP planning process should not
negate the need for implementing a well-integrated mass transit
system under a knowledge-based and participatory transport planning
process.
• The implementation of a car incentive project such as an
elevated expressway system would likely negate some of the potential
benefits of the proposed mass transit system. Current anti-fuel-free
transport and pro-car transport initiatives would likely be counter-
productive for the development of a sustainable transport system for
Dhaka City.
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