Dhaka: Encyclopedia II - Dhaka - Public transportation

Dhaka - Public transportation

The main mode of transportation in Dhaka city is non-motorized cycle rickshaws. Almost 320,000 rickshaws are run in the Dhaka city every day, of these, 70,000 of them are officially registered [1]. Rickshaws have been blamed for causing traffic congestion, and have been banned from some major city roads despite their low cost and low pollution levels.

The next important means of transport are public buses. The state-owned Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) operates local and long distance buses. There are many private bus operators which provided local bus service, as well as premium non-stop bus service between the downtown and the suburbs.

Before 2002, Dhaka was plagued with pollution from two-stroke 3-wheeler taxis or scooters (locally called Baby Taxy, each carrying about 3 passengers) and human haulers (locally called Tempu, each carried about 10 people). More than 50,000 smoke-emitting taxis polluted the air with carbon-monoxide, lead, and other hazardous compounds. A Government-ban on two-stroke vehicles in 2002 helped clear the air. Since then, the two-stroke taxis have been replaced by four-stroke Green taxis which run on Concentrated Natural gas or CNG. A low number of CNG refilling stations created a problem initially, but Government subsidies and allocation of land for such stations have encouraged the establishment of a sufficient number of CNG stations.

Zia International Airport is Bangladesh's main international airport, and the bearer of a large traffic and trade across South Asia, Central Asia, Europe and North America.

Finally, Dhaka has a large number of private cars. Since the cost of a car is well above the per-capita annual income of most of the people, ownership of cars is limited to the wealthier segment of the population.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Public transportation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki