Dhaka plans expressway to ease traffic congestion

DHAKA - Bangladesh has floated a $2 billion tender for building an elevated expressway of over 32 km to ease national capital Dhaka’s increasing traffic congestion, a newspaper said Wednesday.

The Bangladesh Bridge Authority has begun receiving pre-qualification documents for the public-private-partnership project.

The city, founded four centuries ago, has grown manifold since it became the national capital in 1971 after Bangladesh became independent.

“We want to make significant progress in this project within the tenure of the government (till 2013),” said Communications Minister Syed Abul Hossain. “The traffic situation in the city is a mess.”

The Daily Star newspaper Wednesday quoted the minister as saying: “We started the project overcoming serious difficulties. We had waived some government rules so that it does not get tangled in red tape.”

Dhaka is home to 13 million people with a density of 6,200 people per square kilometre. Dhaka’s population is projected to double in the next 20 years, the newspaper said.