Posted December 28, 2022 at 7:26pmUpdated December 28th. 2022 at 19:27
An overhead metro line now runs through the heart of the Bangladeshi capital. Prime Minister Seikh Hasina inaugurated it on Wednesday. He bought a ticket, before taking a ride on a train in the green and red colors of his country, driven by a driver. “We have added a feather of pride to Bangladesh’s development crown,” he said.
With this first section of the metro network, called “line 6” and 20 km long, Bangladesh becomes the third country in South Asia to open a metro network, after India in 1984, and Pakistan a year ago, two years ago does. The prime minister also paid tribute to the six Japanese railway engineers killed in an attack by Islamist terrorists on a city cafe in 2016.
Much of the $2.8 billion needed to build this first Dakka Rail milestone comes from funds from Japan’s funding agency JICA. The metro should help solve two of the city’s big problems: pollution and traffic jams. With 22 million inhabitants, Dakka is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Traffic jams undermine the daily lives of its workers, as well as the local economy: working hours lost in traffic jams are estimated at $3 billion a year.
A figure that is all the heavier the worse the traffic status. Ten years ago, motorists drove through Dakka at an average speed of 21km/h. Today the city can only be traversed at 7 km/h. This automobile congestion makes Dakka unbreathable: in 2020, its level of fine particle pollution was fifteen times higher than WHO recommendations.
At least three subway lines are planned
Facing road congestion, Dakka Air Metro concentrates hopes. “This metro represents a crucial milestone in the development of Bangladesh,” said Prime Minister Hasina.
The network is expected to have at least three metro lines and around a hundred stops by 2030. To which two more metro lines could be added, although their construction appears to be jeopardized by a JICA study, which questions their potential profitability.
These three metro lines are expected to reduce the transportation time of Dakka residents “by 60 to 80 per cent,” according to a project expert quoted by the Bengali newspaper The company standard . But he points out that a single subway line isn’t enough to dramatically change transportation conditions across the city. The monster limits should therefore persist until 2030.
Japan, creditor of the new subway
Joining Prime Minister Hasina at the inauguration ceremony were Japanese Ambassador to Bangladesh Kiminori Iwama and JICA President Ighiguchi Tomohide. The ambassador expressed his willingness to strengthen ties between Japan and Bangladesh as Japanese investment in the country increases.
This metro line is the second largest infrastructure project in the history of Bangladesh. The first was the construction of a bridge over the Padma River, a branch of the Ganges, worth 3.6 billion dollars, financed mainly by China. Both projects emerged under Sheikh Hasina’s tenure, which began ten years ago. A mandate characterized by “authoritarian control [de la population] and impressive economic growth,” underlines the New York Times .
