Only metro to roll this month, BRT, expressway may open next year

Infographic: TBS

This December was supposed to be a triumphant one for Dhaka city's mass transport landscape, with at least three mega projects scheduled to open to traffic, partially or fully.

But snags have meant the feathers in the cap must be kept on hold for a bit longer.

The Dhaka Metro Rail is opening partially on 28 December, while the opening of a part of the Dhaka Elevated Expressway is now slated for March 2023. The full Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has been tentatively deferred to June next year.

For now, commuters can enjoy the comfort and speed of metro rail trips between Uttara and Agargaon as the prime minister is scheduled to open the 11km stretch of the country's first-ever metro planned up to Kamalapur rail station.

But they will have to wait some more for a drive from the airport to Tejgaon on the elevated expressway, also the country's first.

Though the opening is now scheduled for March in the progress report, the pace of physical work has not yet geared up to meet the new deadline.

Opening of a 2km flyover has so far been all about the 20km BRT promised by the authorities to be ready for traffic by December, meaning that travel woes of commuters between airport and Gazipur would linger along the busy highway narrowed by unending BRT roadworks.

Nothing express about expressway

This is not the first change in the opening schedule of the expressway.

Road Transport and Bridges Minister Obaidul Quader in June 2019 had said the Dhaka-Chattogram elevated expressway would open to traffic from the airport to Moghbazar after the completion of the second phase work of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) project by December 2020.

In 2011, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs gave in-principle approval to implement the project on a PPP basis. 

In this regard, an agreement was signed with the Ital-Thai Company in December 2013.

The schedule for opening the 12km segment between airport and Tejgaon was deferred to December this year, which has been shifted again in the latest progress report.

The 19.73km expressway is split in three phases; the first phase from the airport to Banani was supposed to complete by December 2020, while the second phase from Banani rail crossing to Moghbazar and the third phase from Moghbazar to Kutubkhali on the Dhaka-Chattogram highway by March 2022.

Though conceived a few years earlier, the physical work on the country's first expressway project worth Tk8,940 crore formally began in April 2018. The elevated road is designed to reduce traffic load in downtown Dhaka and give faster access to the Dhaka-Chattogram highway for vehicles from northern and central districts.

The Ital-Thai Company, the main investor in the construction of the country's first elevated expressway, invested Tk231.30 crore in Thai baht in the project over the past year.

The first hurdle was encountered when releasing the funds.

Ital-Thai was set to invest Tk6,527 crore of the total amount. In the last one year, it released only 3.54% of the total.

The Ital-Thai Company's unaudited financial report says the firm has invested 320.11 crore Thai baht or Tk813.65 crore in the construction of flyovers in Dhaka as of 30 September.

The company has disbursed only 12.47% of the company's promised Tk6,527 crore for the implementation of the entire project so far.

After Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina laid the foundation stone of the project the funding crisis held up the work. 

After the government provided a Tk2,413 crore Viability Gap Funding (VGF), work was underway. The Chinese contractors also raised money by selling shares and applied for a loan guarantee of $861 from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and the China EXIM Bank.

The second snag

Although the Ital-Thai company had promised to inaugurate the flyover this year, the goal was missed owing to non-investment.

The company claimed that the pace of implementation was hampered by a lack of supply of raw materials and an increase in prices due to the Russia-Ukraine war.

It also cited the Covid-19 pandemic-induced shutdowns as another reason for the delay.

In a progress report sent to various departments, including the government's PPP office, the company said work is underway to open the road for vehicles after the first phase of work is completed by March next year.

Md Abul Bashar, director general (Programming and Investment Promotion) at the PPP of the government, told The Business Standard that the rate of implementation was steadily increasing. 

He also said the Airport-Tejgaon part would be inaugurated in June due to the slowdown of the work.

Bashar said there had also been some changes in the project. A new line is being added through Panthkunj, Hatirpool to Palasi.

Progress of first part 89.54%

As a listed company in The Stock Exchange of Thailand, the quarterly report of Ital-Thai Company says that the progress in the construction of the 7.45km flyover road of the Tranch-1, i.e., Airport to Banani part of the project has reached 89.54% till September. 

The growth of this segment was 67.95% over the same period of the previous year. As such the progress of the first segment increased by 21.59 percentage points in one year.

However, the report revealed that there has been no progress in the construction of the second and third parts of the project at this time. Construction of the Central Control Building has progressed to 74%.

Meanwhile, various machinery and construction materials are lying idle in the construction yard of the project, which is set up parallel to the railway line in front of the Tejgaon railway station. Only a few security personnel are working in this yard, which has more than a thousand workers. 

One of the workers said activities had remained suspended for the past two months.

Security officials say project workers staged a protest in September due to complications in payment of wages. After clearing the dues and sending the workers off, no more work was done in the Tejgaon area. Some pillars have been erected on both sides of the railway line in Karwan Bazar area but no viaduct has been constructed.

BRT set for next December

The Bus Rapid Transit or BRT project was approved in 2012 at a cost of Tk2,040 crore to be completed by 2016. 

Due to phased extensions, the project's cost has since doubled to Tk4,268.33 crore. The last deadline for completion of the work was set in December this year.

If the work had been completed on time with proper planning, the travel time from Gazipur to the airport would have decreased from two and a half hours to 45 minutes. 

Dhaka BRT Managing Director (MD) Shafiqul Islam said more than 80% of the project work has been completed. 

They have proposed extending the deadline by one more year till December 2023. He said it would be possible to start the BRT by the end of June.

ASM Ilyas Shah, director of the road section of the project, said a one-year extension had been proposed for the last time. After this, no further extension of time will be applied for. 

He said the deadline was crossed due to lack of proper planning and a faulty design.

Partial Early Commissioning of Metro Rail

Implementation of the MRT Line-6 project to launch the country's first metro rail from Uttara to Motijheel has been underway since 1 June, 2012. Once the project is completed, commuters will be able to cover the 20.16km stretch in 38-40 minutes. About five lakh passengers can be transported daily.

Although the project has a tenure of up to 2024, the target of launching the 11.73km metro rail from Uttara to Agargaon, its inauguration date, has been announced as December of each year since 2019. 

After three consecutive years of failure, the metro rail is set to become partially operational. 

At the last stage, however, an initiative has been taken to extend the metro line up to Kamalapur. The 21.26km metro rail will have to wait till December 2025.