Hellish highway despite spending Tk 36b

Dhaka-Ctg highway tailback. File Photo
Dhaka-Ctg highway tailback. File Photo

A group of friends were on the way to Dhaka from Chattogram to take the Sonali Bank recruitment test in April. They boarded a Shyamoli Paribahan bus around 11:30pm the night before the exam and were scheduled to reach Dhaka in the morning as the trip usually takes around 5 to 6 hours.

The journey eventually turned into a heartbreaking story for the young men for whom a public sector job was a dream to start a new life.

“Our exam was scheduled at 10:00am in the morning, but we were still stuck on the Daudkandi Bridge in Comilla when the exam started. We returned to Chattogram,” said Golam Mustafa, a private sector employee in Bandarban.

The much talked about mega project of the Dhaka-Chattogram four-lane highway was supposed to ease the traffic woes of the country’s busiest highway. But, every day experience says, traffic movement has deteriorated as thousands like Golam Mostafa suffer on the tailback that stretches out for miles.

Traffic congestion at a few points on the highway has made bus journey from Dhaka to Chattogram a nightmare, said several others who regularly use the highway.

The highway was supposed to be complete by June 2012, according to the deadline fixed when the project was approved in December 2005.

However, the authorities extended the deadline five times, steadily pushing the up the cost of the project. The highway was finally declared ready for public use in July 2016 when the aggregate cost stood at $36 billion, much higher than the initially estimated one at $21 billion.

The project included construction of 23 bridges, 242 culverts, three railway overpasses, 14 road bypasses, two underpasses, 34 steel foot over-bridges and 61 bus bays.

The frequent escalation of costs raised the eyebrows of many as, for example, the World Bank in a June 2017 report observed that the construction cost of highways in Bangladesh is the highest in world.

According to the WB report, the estimated cost of construction per kilometre of the Dhaka-Chattogram highway is $2.5 million while a four-lane highway costs $1.1 million to $1.3 million per kilometre in India and $1.3 million to $ 1.6 million in China.

Despite spending such a huge amount, the highway already requires repairs here and there, according to witnesses.

Frequent travellers said there is long trail of ruts along some parts of the highway, which makes travel bumpy and uncomfortable.

"It’s often risky to change the lanes because of the ruts,” Belal Hossain, driver of a Saudia Paribahan bus, told Prothom Alo.

The highway has hit the headlines regularly in recent times due to the long tailbacks and suffering of the passengers, especially women, children and the elderly.

Driver Belal cited an example: A trip took him more than 20 hours to reach Dhaka from Chattogram, instead of the estimated 5 to 7 hours.

Fearing gridlocks on the highway and missing schedules, Ataur Rahman, a former student of Chittagong University, no more travels by bus.

‘I now prefer to travel by train instead of bus,’ he said on 25 May when he came to Dhaka to appear in a recruitment exam of Bangladesh Bank.

Officials of the roads and highways department pointed to bottlenecks on either side of some some narrow bridges as the main reasons of the inordinate jams.

Three under-construction bridges on the Sitalakkhya, Meghna and Gumti rivers may reduce the congestion, they hope. Four-lane bridges alongside the existing Kanchpur, Meghna and Meghna-Gumti bridges may also help improve the situation.

The new bridges will be ready for use by January or February as construction work has been accelerated following the outcry from transport owner associations and passengers.

Our Feni correspondent said, construction work of a railway-overpass in Fatehpur area of the district created long tailbacks for almost five days on 13-17 May.

The bottlenecks caused by the construction work of the flyover left thousands of vehicles stranded for hours, even days.

However, the situation improved slightly after a Dhaka-bound lane of the overpass was opened on 20 May.

A Prothom Alo report also said that 800 kilometres out of 3,460 kilometres of the highways are now in poor condition.

"Roads and highways are repaired haphazardly and no standards are maintained. The repair work is done by contractors selected on political considerations," a professor of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Shamsul Haque, told Prothom Alo.