<i>Banning rickshaws</i>
Many thanks to Mr Sikander Ahmed for his letter published in The Daily Star on 15 January 2007, pointing out the plights of the majority of commuters due to ban on rickshaws in Mohakhali to Gulshan road. I remember the day I was thrown out from a rickshaw on a rainy day on this road by a traffic policeman too keen to implement the ban on rickshaw. It was not very nice to walk the rest of the way to my office all soaked in rain. One reason for rickshaws being blamed for traffic jam and banned is probably that it is easier to implement restriction on the poor and weak! In the last ten years in Dhaka I have seen several times traffic policemen puncturing tyres of rickshaws as a punishment for disobeying traffic rules, but have never seen them do any such thing to the cars that clearly ignore traffic rules. True, rickshaw-pullers do not obey the traffic rules and create jams frequently. But the same is true about cars, buses or any other motorised vehicles. Nobody appears to be aware of any traffic rules relating to overtaking, changing lanes, right of the way, parking and such things. It's more like doing whatever you can get away with and of course you can get away with almost anything! So, banning rickshaws would not solve anything unless people on the road - pedestrians, rickshaw-pullers, drivers of motor vehicles - learn to follow the very basic traffic rules. If I can think of ways for rickshaws to coexist without creating traffic congestion using common sense, the so called planners should be able to think of better solutions than banning ricksahws, without offering any alternative to the common people.
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