One Of World's Most Crowded Cities Gets First Mass-Transit Rail
NDTV
A section of the 20-kilometer (12.427 miles) urban rail project, known as Line 6, will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wednesday.
Bangladesh's capital is about to get its first metro rail, a Japanese-funded project that aims to ease commuting in one of the most congested cities in the world.
A section of the 20-kilometer (12.427 miles) urban rail project, known as Line 6, will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wednesday. The line connects the northern zone of Dhaka to a hub of government offices and hospitals in the middle for now. Eventually it will cut through the city to the financial district of Motijheel in the south.
While the project is likely to bring significant changes to how people travel in Dhaka, its inauguration will also give some much-needed political mileage to Hasina's government. With elections expected in January 2024, the leader and her party are under pressure as the South Asian nation's foreign currency reserves dwindle and it battles inflation and energy crises.
In Dhaka, with 10.3 million people packed in 305 square kilometers (117.76 square miles), the average driving speeds have dropped to less than 7 kilometers (4.3496 miles) an hour right now from 21 kilometers an hour 10 years ago. Given the current trends, a World Bank report has estimated it could drop as low as 4 kilometers an hour, slower than walking.
