Garage your car!
Photo: Amdadul Huq / driknews
The DS of 12 Oct was a milestone of sorts. My letter “Dhaka's Traffic Mess” was printed without a comma being edited out and then on the adjoining page, Dhaka University's Prof K Siddique-e- Rabbani's masterpiece “Taking Rickshaws off Increased Traffic Jam”, in which he has summarized in a short article what I have been barking at in the wilderness in 51 letters over the last two years as the best and immediate solution to our traffic problems. Mr Fazlul Haque's letter “Traffic in Dhaka” on the same page is also couched in the same vein. So Madam Prime Minister, Concerned Ministers, MPs, Experts on Traffic Management, Traffic Controllers, down to the humble, over-worked traffic cops, put away your 5 or 10 years and eternal plans for the freeways, monorails, Maglevs, STPs, DUTPs, and all other TPs, because now you have a blue print for the immediate solution that can be implemented tomorrow and which is equitable, just, fair, profitable and environmentally beneficial for all Dhakabashis and not just the privileged few. Want me to spell out the first phase in simple words? 1) No Parking on public thoroughfares. 2) Cars, without valid fitness certificates, tax tokens, unlicensed and more than 15 years old, seized. 3) Empty (only driver), half-empty (one passenger in the back) fined on main/trunk roads between 8:am and 8:pm. 4) Car loans from banks suspended 5) I/T clearance that car is declared in I/T records 6) Private cars to run on petrol only, no gas, 7) Cars restricted to one per family (I know of one having 18 cars for 3 members), 8) All fake driving licenses cancelled. 9) Import of cars in excess of 1,000 cc banned for 5 years. 10) All other existing traffic laws relative to lights, horns, etc to be enforced. If the above are rigorously implemented and the 61 crore potholes, masquerading as roads, filled in/repaired, there will be plenty of space for rickshaws, CNGs, buses and other forms of mass transportation for the 'common people” on all public roads. I have a solution for disposal of the resultant surplus cars too. I appeal to all our 'public servants' (lead by example) and the privileged few to garage their cars and their egos and give Prof Rabbani's suggestions a trial for just 4 weeks. In this context, today's news of the Cabinet okaying 'new timings for GoB, NGO offices, banks, schools etc to solve the jams is, to say the least, hilarious. Two quotations come to mind a) “Who will bell the (fat) cats?” and b) “The ostrich, in trouble buries its head in sand” Only now, the Ostrich residing in Kahn's White Elephant stables is digging deeper into the (quick)sand!
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