Roads and highways hit by rains and repairs

Roads are being repaired at Mahastan area along Bogura-Rangpur highways, causing a traffic congestion in the area. The picture is captured on Friday noon. Photo: Sohel Rana
Roads are being repaired at Mahastan area along Bogura-Rangpur highways, causing a traffic congestion in the area. The picture is captured on Friday noon. Photo: Sohel Rana

Road transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader held two meetings over the past week with relevant officials of his ministry regarding the state of the country’s roads and highways

He has issued directives for the damaged roads to be repaired and ready a week before Eid.

Similar instructions are issued before every Eid. If the rains are not heavy, the road repairs last for some time. But if the rains are incessant, the repairs are washed away.

Before the rains started this year, 4,247 km of the country’s important roads and highways were in a bad shape. Then the rains and floods came and inundated the roads.

Makeshift repairs are on and the Eid travellers face an uncertain plight for their homeward journeys.

Many roads and highways along Kurigram, Gaibandha and Jamalpur were washed away by the floods this monsoon. Some roads still remain underwater. The national highway at the hill district Bandarban is in a state of total disrepair.

The roads and highways department has said till 23 July this year, 450 km of roads in 18 districts have been damaged.

According to the roads and highways department, the newly constructed roads have a 20 year lifespan. That means these roads should hardly need any repairs for at least five years.

If old roads are reconstructed, these have a 10 year lifespan. And if the repairs are extensive, the roads will last for three to five years. But at present almost all the roads and highways are caught up in repairs, demolition and repairs all over again.

Road transport and bridges ministry sources said that from 2009 to 2018, Tk 575.28 billion was spent for construction, repairs and widening of roads and highways under the roads and highways department.

A total of 5,179 km of roads were widened and reinforced in that span of time. Various sorts of repairs were carried out in 14,019 km of roads. That means over the past one decade, 20,098 km of roads have undergone some form of repairs or maintenance. That again means, 91 per cent of the roads and highways have come under some sort of expenditure.

The Dhaka-Chattogram highway was upgraded to a four-lane highway which became fu

Now another project for repairs of around Tk 8 billion has been taken up. The Jashore section of the Dhaka-Khulna highway is also undergoing repairs. The Sirajganj to Bogura stretch of the Dhaka-Rangpur highway is in the same under-repair condition.

Officials of the roads and highways department have said that broadly speaking, the roads are not long-lasting for three reasons. One is the plying of heavy vehicles. The second is delays in construction and repair work. And the third is sub-standard construction and repairs.

Additional chief engineer of the roads and highways department, Ashraful Alam, told Prothom Alo that the roads would be normal before Eid if the rains were not extensive. He does not expect that the passengers will suffer.

The roads and highways official said the roads were damaged easily because the large numbers of heavy vehicles which used these routes were exceeding the previously estimated numbers. That was why the roads were damaged quite soon after construction and repairs.

Suffering at the same sites

The 12 km stretch from Abdullahpur to Gazipur along the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway has long been in a bad state. There is a plan underway for a separate lane for buses along this highway. Drains are being made on either side of the highway as part of this plan. So one-third of the highway is unusable at present. And Tongi Station Road, Signboard, Chandana intersection, Bashon and Bhogra are waterlogged every time there is rain.

Demolition and repairs are on along the 38 km Jashore stretch of the Dhaka-Khulna highway. The repairs crumble away almost immediately upon completion. It is the same picture along various highways across the country.

An official of the roads and highways department, on condition of anonymity, has said it is not always because of the pitiful state of the roads that there are traffic jams and public suffering. Sometimes the problem is mismanagement. Sometimes narrow bridges cause traffic congestion. He said, during Eid-ul-Fitr this year, there was traffic congestion along the Dhaka-Tangail highway before and after Bangabandhu Bridge. After the four-lane stretch from Dhaka to Elenga, the highway narrows down to two lanes at the bridge, holding up traffic.

Roads and Highways survey

The country’s important roads and highways are under the roads and highways department. These are of three categories - national highways, regional highways and district roads. Every year the condition of the roads are assessed by the Highway Development Module (HDM).

The last survey was carried out on 17,452 km of roads from last November to March. The survey report, published in May, placed the roads and highways in five categories - good, passable, poor, bad and very bad. The HDM report stated, 22 per cent of the national highways were in the poor, bad and very bad state. Again, 23.13 per cent of the regional highways and 25.60 per cent of the district roads were in a bad state. Overall, 24.34 per cent of the country’s roads were in a bad state.

Professor of civil engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and director of the Road Accident Research Institute, Mizanur Rahman, told Prothom Alo that the roads and highways department is more focused on mega projects than road maintenance. And any maintenance that takes place, is carried out towards the end of the fiscal year when the rains begin. It is obvious that repairs won’t last with the rains.

Mizanur Rahman went on to say that repairs should be carried out in the dry season and should be done well. There has to be technological changes in keeping with new road construction methods. For example, modified bitumen can be used for road pitch. If this bitumen had been used, then the Dhaka-Chattogram highway would not have been uneven at so many points.

* Prothom Alo correspondents of the respective areas provided information for this report. The report was published in the print edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten in English by Ayesha Kabir