Dhaka started its City career as a Mughal Provincial Capital in around 1600 AD. It was initiated by the Mughal military Governor Shaikh Islam Khan during the time of Emperor Jahangir. The Capital was later moved to Murshibad by Murshid Kuli Khan during the time of Emperor Aurangzeb. Dhaka remained just another District town of Bengal during British rule except when it was declared the Provinicial Capital of a new Province called East Bengal-Assam in probably 1905.
Dhaka was enlarged quite a little after 1905. New areas were added and new residential buildings were constructed to make it look more like a Capital. After 1947 Dhaka started to expand and is still expanding. However, modern transport infrastructures are absent in the planning. Dhaka has many wide roads, but, it needs many more side roads to branch out from the main roads. This creates a kind of heavy traffic during peak hours.
Dhaka is void of underground or overhead trains that may be seen crisscrossing all the world's mega-Cities. Dhaka is not even encircled with any loop roads at its outskirt. So, a car or a truck from, say, Mymensingh, has to enter Dhaka first in order to reach the Dhaka-Chittagong road. So, this increases the traffic jam inside Dhaka.
The country's infrastructure planners have miserably failed to pinpoint the causes of traffic jams. They have more failed to implement road plans that may alleviate the jam. So, I would like to make a few proposals here so that Dhaka can be lively and also livable.
1) Arrange for many two way off-shoot streets from the main 6-lane roads. Many of the existing structures on any proposed street can be bought out by the central or municipal govt.
2) In a rail-road junction, the railway line must be elevated by building new structures to ensure free and unobstructed road traffic.
3) Build one or two-tier 4-lane loop roads around Dhaka. The outer traffic will go via these loops. This will contribute to reducing traffic jam inside Dhaka. It means, a car from Tangail will not have to navigate through Dhaka roads in order to reach its destination in Motijheel/Gulistan or old Dhaka. It can bypass center of Dhaka and take one of the outer circular roads to reach the destination.
4) Build circular loop railway lines first and then other direct lines that crisscross Dhaka, underground and overground - both. This circular railway lines should be built in such a way that it resists flood water from entering the Dhaka urban centers. It means, the rail lines near Balu, Turag, Buriganga and other rivers must lie on elevated soil structures. These soil mounds must be fitted with box culverts/sluice gates wherever there are openings due to various reasons in the soil below the lines.
5) Let the govt buy lands in Dhaka here and there, and build gardens, parks and playgrounds for everybody and specially for the children.
This thread is about decentralization of Bangladesh. I do not think it will happen the way the initiator of this thread intends to. Morever, all the cities and towns of Bangladesh are similarly unplanned and lack civic facilities. Dhaka became a mega city only because of overpopulation of the country. So, Dhaka should be incorporated with many facilities that can be seen in all the developed cities of the world. This will make Dhaka again a livable place.
There are other big cities in BD that are also feeling the pressure of unplanned building of road and other facilities. We are not a communist country of Khemr Rouge Cambodia where people were foced to move. Demographic movements in BD take place by individual decisions. So, contrary to what some people are saying here, it may never be possible to urbanise 55% or so percentage of people by design. So, we have to plan how to civilize our cities including Dhaka.
