This should sound familiar: you leave the house at 8 in the morning to make it to a 10 AM session, you attend both classes for the sake of attendance, and by the time you leave home at noon, the whole city is gridlocked. You start walking in the heat because the bus hasn’t moved for fifteen minutes only to find that there isn’t even a single open spot on the route.
Why did it become unworkable?
Whatever remaining sidewalk portions are either occupied by vendors or construction materials. You realize that you, a pedestrian, are the lowest priority in your city’s urban design as you stand between a CNG and a bus, behind a line of five people in the center of the road, and watch someone parkour over rickshaws.
The standard of living in a city is directly correlated with how individuals decide to move around in it.
A walkable neighborhood is seen as a real, liveable one in this highly automobile-oriented society. A city that is walkable places more emphasis on planning for pedestrians than on motorized vehicles.
The quantity and capacity of pavements play a major role in a city’s walkability. However, compared to the required 2,600 kilometers, Dhaka has just about 515 kilometers of pavement. The majority of the pavements have uncovered drains and manholes or are uneven, crooked, or both.
Even if you do come to a free section of pavement, it is likely to be filled with trash, brick pavers, or roadside vendors. Efti and other pedestrians are forced to utilize main roads because there are no accessible sidewalks, which results in several accidents every year. Water congestion is a significant problem that affects Dhaka’s walkability. The sewage drains are frequently unsteady or unprotected.
Water encroachment makes walking in places like Mirpur, Malibagh, Jatrabari, and most of South Dhaka a miserable experience that is physically dangerous with every step.
Maximum intersections have been designed to maximize traffic flow and enable fast turns for moving vehicles. However, prolonging the crossing, this attempt to ease traffic congestion hurts walkability. Many of the congested streets are devoid of foot overbridges, and those that do exist are either unclean, occupied by the homeless, or judged dangerous for pedestrians.
What is the solution?
A city can be made walkable by providing amenities for pedestrians. The essentials of designing a walkable neighborhood include having public restrooms, benches spaced at regular intervals, trashcans, and a decent quantity of greenery. One of the most frequently voiced grievances among pedestrians, particularly in South Dhaka, is the lack of trash cans.
According to data from 2017, a walkable city should have 25% of vegetation, while Dhaka only has 5%. Although 19.6 percent of trips in Dhaka are made on foot, and a staggering 37.2 percent in the greater Dhaka Metropolitan Area, the city was built with automobiles in mind because of its inefficient street lighting, lack of drinking fountains, and curvilinear cuts in the footpaths for the disabled.
Thus, this city needs immediate changes to implement adequate planning for pavements.
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Writer,
Nafis Wahid Nijhum
Intern, Content Writing Department, YSSE