Travellers tangled in tailback

People get onto a truck at Gabtali in the capital on Friday to reach their destinations. The government banned truck carrying people after the Mirsarai traffic accident that killed 43 people.— Sony Ramany

Tapos Kanti Das and Mohiuddin Alamgir

Rundown roads and streams of traffic triggered miles of tailbacks on all national highways on Friday causing thousands of passengers long and agonising wait on their way home to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha.

All buses and trains left Dhaka two to ten hours late forcing many train passengers to return home.  Overcrowded trains forced many passengers to cancel the journey home.

A goods train derailed in Comilla halting trains running between Dhaka and Chittagong for about four hours and increasing the commuters’ troubles.

Defying all the hassles, people left the capital for their ancestral homes, on roofs of launches, trains and buses and by trucks risking their lives to celebrate Eid which falls on Monday.

Passengers at Mahakhali, Gabtali and Sayedabad inter-district bus terminals alleged that transport operators were making windfall profits by forcing them to pay extra

for tickets and keeping them waiting in queues for hours.

A 30-kilometre-long tailback between Daudkandi and Chandina on Dhaka-Chittagong Highway and 40-kilometre traffic congestion on Dhaka-Jamuna highway in Tangail persisted from early Friday.

An increase in the number of vehicles and delay in toll collection at Tora in Manikganj led to a tailback on Dhaka-Aricha highway. A similar tailback was created in Gazipur on Dhaka-Mymenshing highway on the day.

Abdur Rashid, assistant station master at Comilla railway station, told reporters that train communication on the route came to a halt around 3:00pm on Friday after a wagon of a Chittagong-bound boulder-carrying goods train derailed.

A rescue train from Laksam put the wagon back on the track around 7:00pm, he added.

The rush of traffic on highways and frequent schedule failures of buses take the journey home at least three times what it usually requires.

Many passengers were seen waiting for buss at Kalabagan, Kalyanpur and Rajarbagh, where most of the bus counters are located, till late into the night.

Overcrowded launches were seen sailing from Sadarghat terminal mostly for southern districts. At the Kamalapur railway station passengers swarmed every train that left Dhaka for different destinations.

‘I could not get in the train with my family. There is no space left. I am returning home with my wife and child cancelling the trip,’ said Anwar Sadat Robi, an official of the Bangladesh Television, at Kamlapur railway station after failing   to board the Rajshahi-bound Silk City express train.

Home-bound passengers had to wait for hours for transport at Gabtali, Sayedabad and Mahakhali bus terminals, Kamalapur railway station and Sadarghat launch terminal.

Men at counters of Sohag, Greenline, Eagle, Hanif Paribahan Sky Line, Shyamali, and other transport agencies at Kalabagan, Kalyanpur and Rajarbagh told New Age that every bus was leaving the terminals 10-12 hours late due to traffic congestions in Comilla, Tangail and at Paturia-Daulatdia ferry terminals.

A number of passengers at Kamalapur railway station told New Age that the trains bound for different destinations, including Chittagong, Sylhet, Kishoreganj, Rangpur and Dinajpur, had left the station three to five hours late.

Kamlapur station master Sitangsu Chakrabarty said the trains were behind the schedule because people protesting at the killing of Narsingdi mayor Lokman Hossain had set fire to a Dhaka-Kishoreganj passenger train in Narsingdi on Wednesday.

Twenty-three trains and five Eid special trains, left Kamalapur station on the day.

Rafiqul Islam, deputy director of Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority at Sadarghat, told New Age that about 80 launches had left the terminal on the day. ‘We are trying to check overcrowding of vessels.’

Source: newagebd.com/newspaper1

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