Find quick solutions to traffic woes, Yunus tells police, experts

Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus today asked police and experts from the country’s elite engineering university to find quick and effective solutions for easing traffic congestion in the capital Dhaka.
The chief adviser gave the directive during a meeting with top police officials of Dhaka Metropolitan Police and two city traffic system experts from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet).
Prof Yunus ordered the DMP to find “some quick and effective solution” to the traffic problem for Dhaka’s 20 million people.
“We’ve to ease traffic congestion. We need to find a solution immediately,” he said during a meeting at the State Guest House Jamuna in Dhaka.
Traffic police were asked to take up some pilot anti-congestion schemes, such as restricting bus stoppage time in smaller stations to less than two minutes in 2-3 key roads, and subsequently replicate them in other roads of the city.
The Buet experts have been asked to find some home-grown solutions with the help of their students in at least one traffic corridor.
They were also asked to fix the signalling system by using local expertise, according to the chief adviser’s press wing.
Professor Moazzem Hossain of Buet, a transportation and traffic system expert, gave a presentation during the meeting.
He said the country loses at least Tk 40,000 crores annually in traffic congestion in Dhaka city alone.
Kh Nazmul Hassan, additional commissioner of traffic of the DMP, said the traffic situation has continued to improve in recent weeks after the deployment of more traffic policemen.
Full deployment is expected by the end of next week, he said.
Lieutenant General (retired) Abdul Hafiz, the special assistant to the chief adviser, Md Hadiuzzaman, a civil engineering professor of BUET, and Faruk Ahmed, an additional commissioner of DMP, also spoke during the meeting.