Tuhin Shubhra Adhikary

Bangladesh Bridge Authority (BBA) has decided to raise the toll rate of Bangabandhu Bridge by around 17 percent aiming to boost its income for covering maintenance costs and repaying loans.

Upgradation of Dhaka Bypass Road into a four-lane access-control expressway under the first-ever Public Private Partnership project of Roads and Highways Department (RHD) is finally making progress.

With most of its previous decisions unimplemented, a taskforce, led by Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal, is going to sit for its third meeting today.

The government is planning to find out how many vehicles operate in the capital as well as the capacity of its streets.

The Bangladesh Railway’s abysmal track record in project implementation will continue for a while, it seems.

The government is finally going to fix the economic service life of all commercial vehicles, including buses and trucks, more than two years after a high-powered committee recommended it.

Even though they are quite well paid and receive plenty of perks from the government, a “huge” number of civil servants own and run businesses on the side violating service rules, according to the Anti-Corruption Commission.

Two major railway expansion projects have plunged into uncertainty as China has decided not to finance one of those and the Chinese contractors for both the projects have refused to work following downward revision of the contract prices.

Realising their imminent failure to meet the deadline for early commissioning, the authorities are planning to launch the Uttara-Agargaon metro rail service by December next year.

The mega projects, whose completion are expected to raise Bangladesh’s GDP by as much as 4 percent, got about 48 percent more allocation in the upcoming fiscal year, as part of the government’s push to ensure their timely implementation.

The government has to spend more than 40,000 crore to bring Payra Sea Port in Patuakhali and Barishal under the rail network, a study says.

Although more than half of the project period has already elapsed, railways authorities could not take decision yet whether they would develop some infrastructure for the installation of electric traction under the ongoing Padma Bridge Rail Link Project (PBRLP).

Bangladesh Railway’s initiative to introduce electric train service in the country has not seen any progress over the last six years, thanks to indecision on selecting the route to be converted for electric traction.

With the railway authorities yet to determine the fate of 10 locomotives that a South Korean company supplied breaching contract, the project authority has sought one-year extension of deadline.

Although long-haul bus services remained suspended since early last month, it had very little impact on the number of vehicles which travelled between Dhaka and the north-western districts via Bangabandhu Bridge last month.

Construction of a rail line from Faridpur’s Madhukhali to Magura is finally going to start this month, around three years after the government approved the Tk 1,202.49-crore project.

More than seven years ago, in April 2014, the government had decided to build a new bridge at Kalurghat in Chattogram through a bilateral cooperation with South Korea.

The road, transport and bridges ministry has stepped back from its decision to start collecting toll from vehicles using the Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga Expressway from July this year, as structures required for it are yet to be readied.

Bangladesh’s first ever electricity train was rolled out on the tracks on a test run yesterday, signaling that the country is now one step closer to fulfil its dream of having its own metro rail.

The authorities may begin a test run of the country’s first metro rail service later this month.