People flock to cities, despite all the traffic congestion and pollution, for a reason: cities offer opportunities that don’t exist in smaller towns and villages, whether educational, professional or treatment-related. . Once in the city, people accept the disadvantages in exchange for the benefits. However, our complaints are constant and our ability to institute positive changes is much less so.

Many factors contribute to a liveable city, including affordable housing, decent infrastructure and services (sewerage, electricity, waste disposal, etc.), abundant open and green spaces, availability of good jobs, education, healthcare , etc. While clean water is vital, so is clean air; We not only need a decent home, but also the possibility of sleeping at night. The existence of quality schools, healthcare and public spaces is of limited usefulness if we cannot access them safely and comfortably.

Too often, cities are destroyed before they have a chance to offer decent living because of their overemphasis on mobility, particularly the movement and storage of cars and other motorized vehicles. When we design our cities with the comfort and convenience of cars in mind, it is almost impossible to provide people with the aforementioned qualities. Cars are simply too expensive, take up too much space, are inefficient, polluting and dangerous to be good companions with people.

“Cars were an invention to improve our lives,” one of my interns commented the other day. “If they’re making our lives worse, shouldn’t we reconsider what we have them for?”

In theory, cars are a quick way to get around. In reality, as cars are used more, traffic congestion increases. While the average traffic speed in Dhaka was 21 km/h in 2007, in 2022 it was just 4.8 km/h. Turns out that’s the average walking speed. A cyclist, by comparison, can easily go 30 km/h.

Imagine you were in charge of allocating road space for different users. On what basis would you assign it? Would you give more to the elite, to the most polluting vehicles, to those that take up more space, to the most dangerous? Or would you try to have a fair distribution of the number of trips by vehicle mode, focusing on encouraging clean trips and penalizing polluting ones? Surely, efficient use of road space will influence your decision.

Looking at the cars piled up on the streets of Dhaka, it is easy to believe that most trips are made by car. In fact, cars represent only a small minority or about 11 percent of trips. And yet, cars occupy 70 percent of road space. Pedestrians are lucky to find a narrow path and cyclists have no infrastructure.

Congestion caused by cars is not just a nuisance; entails real costs: a loss of 82 lakh working hours daily in the capital due to traffic, or the equivalent of 139 million rupees.

Would you like to have cleaner air to breathe? Air pollution is much higher on motorized streets than on non-motorized ones.

And yet, Dhaka and other cities in Bangladesh are increasingly congested, polluted, unsafe and unpleasant. Instead of limiting the number of imported cars and implementing other proven restrictions, such as charging more for parking, we actually encourage car ownership through loans, ample free or low-cost street parking, and insisting that public buildings departments and companies provide, at exorbitant prices. cost, free parking. The number of private cars registered till 2010 was nearly 2.2 lakh; for June 2020, rose to over 3.7 lakhaccording to data from the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA). In the same period, motorcycles increased from over 7.5 lakh to almost 30 lakh. How much more of this can we take?

Authorities predict increasing car use and a real decline in foot travel. God forbid!

All this seems inevitable. Cars confer status; As income increases, so will car use. Those who cannot afford a car buy a motorcycle, which causes similar problems. And our cities become more congested, polluted, noisy and miserable every year. Cars take up an excessive amount of space and stubbornly refuse to leave.

And yet, modern cities like Copenhagen, Vancouver, Hong Kong and Singapore demonstrate that it is possible to control cars and restore liveability to cities: less pollution, less noise, more parks and green spaces, better conditions for walking and riding. bicycle and, therefore, less congestion. Less space and fewer resources dedicated to cars also make it easier to provide all the other amenities that people want and need in cities.

Surely, as we celebrate World Cities Day, it is time to greatly restrict the use of private motor vehicles and make our cities more liveable.

Debra Efroymson He is the executive director of the Bangladesh Welfare Institute.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

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