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Despite number of efforts to ease the severe traffic jam in the capital, the nagging problem is persisting. It is still most annoying factor for people as it delays not only people on the street but also takes a heavy toll on the economy. There has been serious lacking of coordination of the programmes taken to improve the traffic jam problems in the city. Lacking of parking place is among the problems which is needed to take into account along with other efforts. But there are few initiatives by the authorities including the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) taken to solve the problem of parking in the city.
Lack of parking space is seen the major cause of traffic congestion in the city. As space is limited, the drivers go for parking haphazardly. It also made the driver so habituated in rule violation that, even if they were given space, they would not park the vehicles properly. One can understand their habit in old movies of the country. There would be one or two scenes found in almost all old movies that rickshaw drivers kept their vans disorganised way at the crossing point of a street. This habit has been transferred to the drivers of automatic vehicles with the passage of time.
Dhaka City Corporation considers the spaces in front of market places, which they gave lease, as parking lot. But this can accommodate only a few vehicles at a time and the facility is only provided to the shoppers. But there is no such parking place set up in Dhaka city where the drivers would be able to park their cars after dropping their passengers. Every corner of the city requires a parking place. But due to unplanned construction of buildings in the city, it is now hard to find such land for parking.
Under DCC, two multi-storied buildings are now being constructed to able the office goers of Motijheel and Dilkhusa areas for parking their vehicles. But it is also insufficient to absorb the pressure of hundreds of transports that ply in the city's important commercial hub every day during rush hours. It is unlikely to solve the problem of parking of the slow driven transport, 'rickshaw'.
In almost all countries in the world, even in India and China, thousands of cars are parked in the parking lots and people walk miles to go to the desired places. It is necessary for having traffic free road as the driver would not occupy the land across the road. Parking places are required to set up according to need. Recently, China is planning to shift the parking lot outside Beijing to reduce pressure of transports in the capital. So the selection of land for parking space needs different considerations. It is necessary to think - where and how many parking places needed to be set up as well as who will be the users of the facility. As we have different kinds of slow and fast moving vehicles, it is also needed to include them in the planning till the government cannot successfully rehabilitate them. The urgency of parking lot is felt as we see the increase of vehicles on the city streets.
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