Mohakhali flyover
A Mansoor, Dhaka
Mohakhali flyover is nearing completion and expected to be ready for traffic before the year is out. It will be touted as a great achievement in wisdom and capability of the present government. Regressing back, one feels it will ease the traffic burden to and from VIP Road and Dhanmondi towards ZIA, and provide this route the maximum benefit. May be it will be easier for the bigwigs who after a late night party tend to rush to the airport at the last minute, often even managing to hold the flight if it is Biman's! Apart from them the honourable ministers even if they are nearing the country mark in numbers; can either have the traffic stopped or be piloted by a noise making police escort. For that level of hierarchy the flyover makes no difference; either way they create their right of passage!Looking dispassionately, the flyover on a very crowded crossing only eases the burden for two traffic steams out of six. Assuming that both these streams take only the right turn coming from ZIA's direction or the left turn going to ZIA, the maximum imaginable benefit is for thirty three percent of the road users. However, if we realistically consider the density and diversity between all the six traffic streams the statistics is heavily loaded against the users of the flyover. Add to that the rickshaws and other slow moving under-powered transport the maximum level of beneficiaries may not be even ten percent of the total traffic using the routes served by the junction. So who does it benefit? With the proliferation of traffic both in quality and type on this route I believe we will be back to square one in one or two years at most. Regarding avoiding the railway crossing going to ZIA and points before and beyond, let us not forget the railroad crossing after the Naval HQ. The bottleneck here too is increasing and an flyover here would have been more justified than the glorified Mohakhali structure. But then we are not to question why; for may wise men have deemed the necessity of the Mohakhali flyover.
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