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Traffic, life go haywire

Country caught in two hartal spells

Rizanuzzaman Laskar
Chaos descended on Dhaka streets yesterday as the city struggled to cope with the rush of traffic after the two-day hartal last week followed by the weekend.
With another two days of hartal beginning today, many office-goers, students and businessmen had to run important errands yesterday as to some it was the only working day amid four days of hartal and a weekend.
As a result, traffic movement virtually came to a standstill in all major city intersections. Tailbacks lingered for hours and reached far into the highways going in and out of the city.
Sonia Islam, a housewife, who was returning to Dhaka from Magura with her 14-month-old son, spent over
12 hours on the way.
She reached Gabtoli around 12:30am on Friday night instead of schedule time of arrival at 7:00pm. Huge rush of passengers was on the roads due to the past and present weeks' hartal.
Things were not any better for the city dwellers moving within the capital.
Shahriar Hossain, a private jobholder, left his Khilgaon home at 9:00am to attend an important business meeting at 10:00am at his Shahbagh office.
Seeing heavy traffic he decided to take a detour.
“I reached my office at noon," he said. “It took the CNG auto-rickshaw around two hours to reach Farmgate, which usually takes 30 to 50 minutes.”
While the day was supposed to be a holiday, many offices were open and many educational institutes held classes to make up the time lost in the hartals.
“With another two-day hartal starting from tomorrow [today], my teachers have crammed in two exams today,” said Nurul Islam, a private university student, of Malibagh.
It took him two hours to reach Natun Bazar from Malibagh in a city bus and he was another few hours away from his university in
Baridhara.
“I've already missed an exam. Now I'm starting to wonder if I'd make it to the next one,” he said.
Traffic officials said more vehicles took to the street, which created severe tailbacks in many streets. Their impacts spread to surrounding areas, and slowly the whole city.
All roads in and out of the city also suffered from severe traffic congestion, which slowly crept to all the major highways surrounding Dhaka.
City dwellers experienced huge tailbacks at almost all intersections and busy areas in the capital throughout the day.
Police sources said there were severe traffic congestion at Farmgate, Bangla Motor, Bijoy Sarani, Jatrabari, Malibagh, Mouchak, Shahbagh, Mohakhali, Gulshan, Banani and Uttara areas.
At many level crossings, gate guard kept the bars down to keep the rail lines free from traffic as the apparently unending tailbacks tended to stretch onto the rail lines.
On duty rail guard at Tongi Diversion Road level crossing in Moghbazar kept the bar down, stopping vehicular movement over
the tracks as traffic came to a standstill at Moghbazar intersection for over half an hour around 1:00pm.
The guard told The Daily Star if he had not kept the bar down the queue of vehicles would be stuck on the rail lines. With no room to go forward or backward, the vehicles would be caught on the path of oncoming trains, resulting in accidents.