Restriction on cars to check traffic jams

Recent statement by Finance Minister A. M. A. Muhith that "private cars with less than four or five passengers may not be allowed to ply the city streets with a view to making public transport system more efficient" has stirred mixed reactions among people who are eager to find a solution to traffic problems in Dhaka city.

Such restrictions are nothing new to assuage the traffic snarls that are posing threats for many capitals in the world. Such precincts in Bangladesh should also be welcome. One can cite examples of such restrictions in many developed and developing countries. But traffic scenarios in Bangladesh are different from those in countries like Singapore, Bangkok or the USA. What are most needed in Bangladesh are continuous efforts, like in the neighboring countries such as India and China, to improve the traffic management and to overhaul the infrastructures of the railways, roads and highways.

We may wonder: Would such measures of keeping private motor vehicles off the roads and allowing more space for other forms of vehicles ease the traffic jams? Many have started doubting. Imposing irrational restrictions on movement of private cars with lesser passengers may rather exacerbate the messy state of traffic management when space so cleared would be occupied by more rickshaws jamming the roads and more rickety buses causing the pollution.

Of course, public space should be used according to the nature of necessity for the benefit of a greater number of people. Preference should be assigned to the most heavily loaded vehicles like trains, buses, taxis or cars that are fully filled with passengers and goods as those vehicles deserve preference over unloaded vehicles and cars loaded with lesser number of passengers.

If cars with lesser passengers are restricted, one may now argue, should not such car owners also be given huge tax reliefs? The paucity of rights of way should be a basis for a free market on the principle of 'give and take'.

We must bear in mind that restrictions of cars with lesser passengers and allowance of vehicles with more passengers may not alone solve the traffic problem unless there is an efficient traffic management with new roads constructed and the existing roads broadened. Unless slow moving means of transportation like rickshaws and other manually operated vehicles are totally banned from plying the metropolitan areas and unless the lands of railways, roads and highways are freed from the illegal possessions Dhaka or Chittagong city is likely to be bunged up with much more rickshaws, vans and buses instead of cars in a matter of a few months with introduction of the proposed restrictions on cars only.

Initially, to my humble opinion, restrictions can be imposed on the number of cars each family can buy and there may be heavy taxes imposed on a second car to be used by a single family, no matter the car belongs to the government or to an individual or to a company. The government may also ban importation of low occupancy vehicles like reconditioned cars at least for the next three years. Such measures may be short-term or stopgap in nature at best, but in no way a permanent solution.

I guess nowhere in the world, as in Bangladesh, CNG has been made so freely available for anyone to buy as fuel for transports. The government perhaps did commit a great blunder by allowing cars and other vehicles to use CNG as fuel in the first place, as there has not been any significant relief, in terms of fares, made to the poor people who commute in the buses or scooters as a corollary of easy availability of cheap CNG to public transports. CNG has rather helped the rich more than the poor. Given the low price of CNG some irresponsible people, it is observed, use their CNG-run cars for ordinary errands like, for example, fetching cigarettes or laundries from places at walking distances. As a measure of damage control, however, the government may now mull over introducing rationing system for purchasing CNG to discourage car owners from using their cars for trivial purposes.

Congestion stands in the way of streamlining traffic in an efficient manner. Traffic gridlock wastes time, endangers life of critical patients and creates a confluence of the annoyances of air pollution and noise. Measures taken to dilute congested traffic conditions optimize the flow of traffic and promote efficiency.

With a view to softening the demand of traffic, economic incentives like discouraging cars with lesser passengers, fuel taxes, tolls on roads and parking lots, congestion charges, transit subsidies etc. may encourage some drivers to discard their vehicles under congested conditions, thereby achieving the traffic dilution goal. Yet the idea of congestion charges in Dhaka before streamlining its traffic infrastructures may not be welcome, due to political doubts regarding social and economic justice, rather than issues of traffic design or traffic stream engineering.

Restricting cars or charging otherwise for the use of common properties like roads and highways may raise a socio-economic conflict. Such charging may even be considered economic discrimination against the poor. Conversely, it is also true that free consumption of public resources harms the efficiency of its use, and ultimately harms the society as a whole.

It is heartening to note that the cabinet of Bangladesh has already approved a proposal for the state-run Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) to buy from Korea 255 buses at a cost of Taka 212 to make the public transport system more efficient. Undoubtedly the government's decision on introducing luxury air-conditioned bus services in Dhaka city should motivate the wealthy to feel more interested in using public transports, abandoning their private cars.

But, based on past experience and performance of different state-run organizations many observers may be tempted to apprehend that money to be spent by BRTC may not be as fruitful to solve the traffic crises as it would have been if a private company would have spent the same or lesser amount of money for the same purpose.

There are some areas in the service industries in Bangladesh, especially in private sectors where international companies joined hands with local entrepreneurs, where one can notice phenomenal achievements in terms of competition and efficiency. One such industry is that of wireless telecommunication such as cell phone operators where one can today smell real corporate flavors. Success in telecommunication in the private sector should encourage our government to invite reputed international transport operators to undertake the whole job of transportation management.

As a short-term measure an international transport companies in collaboration with local companies may be given long-term leases to use and improve all the lands and infrastructures of the railways, roads and highways in Bangladesh which the government, for its inherent weakness, has not been managing as efficiently as they were supposed to be managed.

Living in a metropolitan city or a big town should also be made costly with a view to discouraging people from living and moving in the cities and towns. The government should tax the city dwellers and townspeople more to build newer, bigger, faster and better roads, more sidewalks and more car parks, to buy more buses and more trains and to set up more efficient traffic signaling and also to provide incentives for use of public transports.

The traffic crisis can be solved if the government decides to build a bigger road system and spend more money on transport infrastructures. And also there should be answers to a plethora of questions such as "Why do we all want to be on the road at the same time?", "Why not workers in this age of the Internet should be allowed to do their paper works in their respective homes at daytime and attend their offices at nighttime?", "Why the garments factories are not yet relocated to rural areas?, "Why not the government offices and headquarters of different companies are relocated outside of the capital city of Dhaka?"

To solve the traffic congestions in Dhaka and other metropolitan cities in Bangladesh it should be exclusively the technocrats and the engineers with experience and expertise---not the Finance Minister or for that matter the politicians---who should be entrusted with the task of framing a long-term plan based on the experience of the experts in developed countries of the world. Framing and implementing a long-term plan may take a number of years. So, a short-term plan must be framed and implemented as immediately as possible before our cities implode with ever-growing city populations the burden of which has already reached the breaking point.

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Restriction on cars to check traffic jams

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