Editorial
Transport woes on the increase
More passenger vehicles may not be the only answer
When the two-stroke autorickshaws and autotempos went off the city streets from January 1, it expectedly led to a vacuum in the public transport system. The alternative measures, undertaken by the government, proved inadequate to offset the crunch the ban on some 20,000 three-wheelers touched off. Albeit a little slow on the uptake, the government has so far tried hard to ease the predicament for the residents. It has commissioned more buses, both single- and double-deckers, for the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) fleet and also paved the path for the private sector to bring in more passenger vehicles -- minibuses, human haulers, compressed natural gas-run autorickshaws and taxicabs. Unfortunately, some owners and drivers of the CNG-run three-wheelers and taxicabs are out to make a windfall at the expense of extreme inconvenience to commuters. As if this was not enough, the government made an upward revision of fuel prices, giving a handle to the transport owners to charge exorbitant fares from passengers. So, now the question is virtually more about reining in profiteering transport owners and drivers than meeting the shortage of passenger vehicles, although the latter holds the key to the former.
We would say the authorities need to move in both directions: arrange transport alternatives as well as put in place regulatory and monitoring measures to streamline the sector as a whole.
The government has given a specific timeframe to the owners to install fare-meters in the CNG-run three-wheelers. So far as the import of such meters is concerned, it has made little progress, which means fare control still looks a distant possibility. There is yet another problem: three-wheeler and cab drivers more often than not refuse to take passengers to places they want to go. The passengers can complain to the police about it; however, in most cases, time constraints and poor availability of law enforcers rule out such a remedy.
There is another dimension to it. In its bid to arrange more passenger vehicles, the government seems to have ignored the infrastructural reality. Simply put, the city road network is already overburdened and more vehicles could mean greater traffic chaos. The network needs dispersing. To add to the troubles, reckless driving on rickshaw-free roads has resulted in a few fatal accidents lately. Obviously, the transport authorities now face a multi-dimensional problem and need to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with it. The first step should be to put in place a monitoring mechanism to din sense into the transport operators' ears that they ought to serve the passengers, not exploit them. If this can be done, other ills will be naturally eliminated.
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