Hope offered to highways
The government is developing a masterplan to turn all major highways into expressways under an umbrella network to enhance mobility, reliability and safety of traffic, and reduce transportation costs for sustained economic growth.
The concept of the masterplan, called National Expressway Programme, has already been drafted by the Roads and Highways Department (RHD) and discussed by officials concerned at the road transport and bridges ministry.
The expressways will have four or more lanes, including one for emergency, with limited exit and entry facilities. Most of those would be designed as toll roads where it is feasible, according to the RHD officials involved with the plan.
An expressway is a highway typically planned for high-speed traffic, usually having no or a fewer number of intersections, limited access and exit points, and a divider between lanes for traffic moving in opposite directions.
The implementation of the mega plan will require more than $70 billion over a period of 15-20 years, according to a rough estimate under the concept that suggested creating a separate wing under RHD to look after the expressway-related issues.
The move came at a time when Bangladesh opened its first expressway -- Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga -- in March this year. Another expressway, Dhaka Bypass, which connects two national highways, is also under construction.
But, RHD officials said, there has to be a complete network to reap the highest economic benefit of these two expressways.
"We have developed a concept to bring major highways under an expressway network," Shishir Kanti Routh, an additional chief engineer of RHD, told The Daily Star recently.
He said the idea is to turn those expressways into economic corridors by connecting them with economic points like sea ports, land ports, inland container depots, for economic growth and meeting future demands.
"We need to have prioritisation, implementation and financing plans for this," he said, adding it would require a huge amount of investment from different sources apart from the government.
Shishir said the ministry already held a meeting with RHD officials last month. Public Private Partnership Authority (PPPA) officials were also involved with the development of the masterplan.
He, however, said they were yet to finalise the total length of highways to be turned into expressway, their standard and financing among many issues.
Another RHD official, who is also involved with the plan, said they have primarily selected 3,993km of highways for the network and it would take $78.55 billion as per a very preliminary estimate.
Zakir Hossain, additional secretary (planning wing) of the Road Transport and Highway Division, told this correspondent recently that RHD is now working on the matter and it will be placed before the Prime Minister's Office.
"Then, further decisions will be taken," he said, adding, "It will take this month to prepare for the meeting."
RATIONALE OF THE MASTERPLAN
Under the RHD, there are 22,096km of national and regional highways and district roads -- of which, 3,906km are national highways.
Although the government has expanded around 450km highways into four-lane in the last 12 years, most of the national highways -- considered the backbone of the country's road network -- still remain two-lane.
So, these national highways often fail to meet increased traffic demand and cause road safety hazards, resulting in economic losses in terms of travel time, vehicle operation and accidents, experts and RHD engineers said.
Although Bangladesh saw phenomenal economic growth in the last decade, the country ranked 105 out of 140 countries in the "quality of roads" index, according to a World Economic Forum-2018 report.
Transportation costs, the largest direct logistic costs in Bangladesh, would be up to 35 percent lower if there were no congestion on roads, said a World Bank report unveiled in November last year.
Experts and RHD engineers observed that upgrading the necessary portions of the existing highways to expressways would be cost effective compared to construction of new roads.
They also said major highways need to be developed for cross-border movement of passengers and freight for developing regional connectivity.
Prof Shamsul Hoque of Buet's civil engineering department said many countries had prepared a masterplan for building an expressway network from the '50s to '70s and some of them have already developed strong networks while others are still developing these.
He said Malaysia has already constructed 37 expressways, India 21, Pakistan 11 and Sri Lanka 3. "Unfortunately, we could not prepare even a masterplan till today."
The transport expert said since Bangladesh has a dearth of land, the policy should be to increase the performance of the existing roads. "To do so, there is no alternative to constructing expressways."
He added, "If we want rapid economic growth, we have to develop infrastructure for this, and expressway is one of them."
He said the masterplan should consider the viability of economic and other relevant aspects while considering which highway corridors would be developed as expressways and the number of lanes of the expressways.
sour
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