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Chaotic all the time

Jaywalking, careless parking of public buses regular feature at airport intersection

Helemul Alam
It is one of the most important roundabouts of the city. The roads around it are the widest and the pavements most spacious.
Yet the Shahjalal airport intersection has become one of the riskiest in the capital with chronic traffic congestion, thanks to mindless jaywalking, careless parking of public buses and largely ineffective traffic policing.
With no speed breakers around the roundabout, vehicles coming from all directions tend to pass the crossing in full throttle whenever they get a chance while pedestrians, instead of using the footbridge that stands within a few yards, choose to jump on the roads in hordes whenever they can, caring little about the speeding vehicles and their lives. This often causes accidents, the latest of which took place on April 2 when a speeding bus lost control and ploughed through pedestrians waiting to wind across the intersection, killing four and injuring 10.
Following the incident, the authorities have installed some rumble strips on the roads around the crossroads believing it would slow down speedingvehicles.
However, this couldn't prevent two other menaces: picking up and dropping passengers at any spot around the intersection and random jaywalking.
Though there are bus bays only within 300 yards of the intersection on both sides, drivers stop their buses practically anywhere they wish except at the bays, triggering unusual traffic congestion and encouraging people to jaywalk.
Visiting the intersection in the morning recently, this correspondent witnessed just when the traffic light turned green, some public buses from the direction of Uttara stopped at the crossing to pick up passengers, forcing hundreds of other vehicles behind to remain immobile for around a minute at least.
And when the errant buses finally moved followed by other vehicles, about two dozen jaywalkers from the airport side started running across the road towards Ashkona rail crossing, halting traffic once again
for nearly a minute.
Taking advantage of this, vehicles that were waiting at Ashkona rail crossing for the red signal to clear zoomed to the other side in complete violation of traffic rules.
The spectacle kept repeating during the two-hour-long stay of this correspondent. Though the traffic police were sometimes found using a rope to restrain pedestrians from jaywalking, this hardly worked. Many pedestrians jumped over the rope and galloped and reached the other side.
At one stage, the policemen got tired, stopped trying to prevent jaywalking and left the safety of the pedestrians in their own hands.
Traffic Inspector of Uttara Zone Humayun Kabir thinks jaywalking is the root cause of the chaos at such an important spot. "But we cannot take action against them because the number of jaywalkers is just too high."
But what actions are taken against the drivers of buses who stop whimsically and haphazardly?
The officer claimed that they file
around 15 cases daily against the bus drivers and tow 12 vehicles every day.
Besides, sometimes stopping a bus in the middle of the road for taking action against it causes further traffic congestion and additional delay of commuters. Considering this, police in many cases refrain from taking measures against errant bus drivers, he added.
To improve the situation, Humayun suggested construction of an underpass for pedestrians and widening of roads around the intersection.
SM Saleuhuddin, former executive director of Dhaka Transport Coordination Board, said since the traffic flow at the spot is likely to keep on increasing, building a flyover would be a sustainable solution to this.
"If it is not possible, construction of an underpass connecting the east and the west sides of the roundabout is very necessary |to prevent jaywalking]," he said, suggesting tougher police action against bus drivers flouting traffic rules.