Drive against battery-powered rickshaws: Is traffic relief coming soon?

After Bangladesh's recent political upheaval, the road traffic in the city has been in a complete mess as battery-run autorickshaws and easy-bike dominated the main roads amid a poor presence of traffic police. However, Dhaka Metropolitan Police started a drive to evict battery-run autorickshaws from the streets of Dhaka city on Thursday, which resulted a sigh of relief for the public.

Meanwhile battery-driven autorishaws were removed from several roads in the capital including Dhandmondi-32, Panthapath and Russel Square since Thursday morning.

Earlier, after visiting Mirpur, Farmgate, Shahbagh, Paltan, Newmarket, Satmasjid areas of the capital it was seen that auto rickshaws were dominating the main roads. Accidents occur due to uncontrolled speed which is several times higher than that of pedal rickshaws. Apart from this, the traffic police struggled to clear the congestion as these autorickshaws causes huge traffic in the main squares of the city.

When asked how these vehicles are running on the main street without permission, Rubel Mia a battery-run rickshaw driver told View Bangladesh that autorickshaws are allowed to run in the alley. But now we go on every road including main roads. The traffic police do not say anything to us. What is your problem?' Many drivers like him said that even though they are running on the main street, the traffic police aren’t obstructing or stopping them.

When asked about such opinions of auto-rickshaw drivers, a sergeant in charge of traffic at Mirpur 10, on condition of anonymity, attributed the situation to the lack of awareness of the drivers as well as the lack of manpower in the traffic.

However, since the eviction campaign started on Thursday, general public expressing satisfaction. The city dwellers feel that this initiative could have been taken earlier.

In this regard, Yasina Ferdous, ADC of Mirpur traffic zone of the capital, told View Bangladesh, "Battery-powered auto-rickshaws are not allowed on the main road. Traffic congestion is also increasing for this. However, miking is being done to make aware not to drive autorickshaws on main road. The eviction programme campaign has also started. DMP Traffic is committed to making the city's main roads free of battery-powered auto-rickshaws, she added.