Home ›› 12 Feb 2023 ›› Front
Almost three years have elapsed, but the Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority (DTCA) is still struggling to come up with an outline to rationalise the bus routes and introduce franchise-based operations in Dhaka city under a project.
The government undertook the Tk 24.49 crore project in March 2020 to appoint a foreign consultancy firm to prepare a concept design and implementation plan. As the DTCA failed to make progress, the initiative could not come out of the on-going piloting stage.
Now the DTCA has got two more years to get the job done as the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the planning ministry has approved a second extension of the deadline for the zero-progress project titled “Preparation of Concept Design and Implementation Plan for Bus Route Rationalisation and Company-Based Operation of Bus Service in Dhaka”.
Currently, no government authority has enough information about the present situation of the public transport system in Dhaka. The bus companies do not operate city services in a structured manner. They choose routes based on profitability. To maximise profitability, buses on the same route compete with each other for passengers, causing traffic congestions and accidents.
Under the technical assistance project, the consultancy firm will now conduct a survey to get the real picture of the city’s transport system. It will design and make an inventory of bus stops, bays, layovers, and other relevant infrastructures; develop a transport model; rationalise and restructure the present bus routes based on the traffic demand model; prepare a commuter traffic plan, a bus scrapping plan, and an implementation plan; make a detailed cost estimation for each component; and prepare bus fleet specifications, centralised computer-based bus operations, and ways to manage an automatic fare collection system.
DTCA officials said all paperwork has been completed to award the work to a South Korean company and the contract might be signed next month.
The project was initially scheduled to be completed by December 2021, but progress was zero when the deadline was reached. The deadline was extended till December 2022, but work could not be started even then. As the project recently got the fresh two-year extension, progress is still zero.
Before the latest extension was approved, an assessment by the IMED under the planning ministry had recommended not extending the deadline further. But the deadline was extended on a set of conditions at a recent meeting.
“We have taken their work plan that describes how they will work and when they will finish. They have also given us a written statement, saying the work plan will be followed properly and there will be no anomaly this time,” IMED Secretary Abul Kashem Md Mohiuddin, who chaired the meeting early this month, told The Business Post.
He said while applying for the extension, the DTCA claimed the project had made no progress due to manpower shortages and the Covid-19 pandemic.
“But we found there was negligence on their part. Besides, their parent authority, the Road Transport and Highways Division, did not monitor the project with due importance,” he added.
The IMED has requested the road transport and bridges ministry to oversee the project and ensure that the work plan is followed properly. DTCA officials, meanwhile, said they are now fully prepared to start the project.
Project details
Consultancy service was sought to plan, design, and map a comprehensive bus route network as well as prepare a time-based action plan which will satisfy the future demand for public transportation, said DTCA officials.
A survey will be conducted within three months to know exactly how many buses run in Dhaka on how many routes as well as the number of buses running illegally or having no fitness certificates, said Project Director Dhrubo Alam.
“We will identify everything to know the real picture of the public transport system in the capital. This will help us chalk out the new public transportation plan,” he said.
The IMED said there was zero progress during the project’s first tenure from March 2020 to December 2021, but the authorities still spent Tk 29.3 lakh. During the first extension from January to December 2022, the project’s financial progress was Tk 48.64 lakh, which was 1.99 per cent of the budget, but work progress was still zero.
When asked how the money was spent despite no progress, Alam said they had to pay the salaries of four people appointed to the project as well as car rents. The fund was spent mostly on running the office and buying logistics, he said.
“Besides, we hired an individual consultant. However, his contract was discontinued as the project’s implementation was being delayed,” he added.
At a project steering committee (PSC) meeting in November last year, it was decided that the project authorities will complete negotiations with the consultancy firm by the 15th of that month and finalise the appointment proposal, but that did not happen.
This was because the project authorities failed to hold the required PSC and the project implementation committee (PIC) meetings. As a result, important decisions could not be made, and the project authorities failed to send the deadline extension proposal to the IMED in due time.
Pilot scheme running now
In line with an outline prepared by Infrastructure Investment Facilitation Company (IIFC), buses have been introduced on a number of rationalised routes. IIFC in its plan proposed introducing 7,335 buses on 42 routes.
The DTCA then decided to seek a foreign consultancy firm’s service as it felt the IIFC outline was not sufficient to fully rationalise the routes. It wanted to conduct a fresh, comprehensive study to revise the routes and get an idea of the estimated cost. “The current route plan is almost fine. Perhaps some routes and clusters will be changed after the survey is conducted by the consultancy firm,” the project director said.
