Road Network Pattern of Dhaka City

Dhaka, the largest city of Bangladesh, is the national capital. Its share of national urban population was
25% in 1981, 31% in 1991 and 34% in 2001 respectively. Dhaka’s dominance exists not only in terms of
population, but also in terms of economy, trade, commerce and administration. In 1991 Dhaka ranked
twenty-fifth among the thirty-four mega cities of the world having a population of more than five million,
while in 2000 it ranked eleventh and by the year 2015 it is anticipated to be the world’s fourth largest city
with an estimated population of 21.1 million (SDNP, 2005).

Road Network of Dhaka City

Now Dhaka is one of the fast growing metropolitan cities with a highly dense and increasing
population in the world. Along with the population growth, demand on different urban infrastructure
has increased in an alarming rate; transportation and travel demand is one of the major areas of concern in
this regard. But after liberation, there is no massive improvement transportation system of Dhaka
city. Haphazard urban expansion with a minimum attention to the living environment has been
the most common scenario here and existing transportation system has become hazardous for the
entire city system due to its inherent transport as well as road network deficiencies. Although,
the city mainly depends on road-based transportation system, the amount of road network is far
apart from the minimum requirements. Only 9 percent of roadways and 6 percent of pavement
area is available, in which 62 km functional primary and 108 km secondary and 221 km
connector road serve the city transport service.

Today the mega city Dhaka is one of the world’s crowded & congested cities. The road pattern of Dhaka
city is not planned. In planning stage, road network should be developed first before developing an area.
If that is so then the road network planner can implement his/her plan. But lack of proper land use and
transport planning, in most of the cases the areas of Dhaka city have been developed without proper
planning. Residential, commercial, industrial all activities are mixed in a area which is very difficult and
complicated to handle. This is one of the reasons of traffic jam.

Another big problem is that a large number of tall buildings have been constructed near the roads and
intersections. This situation hinders the future treatment of road network. For road widening, intersection
treatment, overall change in the road geometry is very difficult.

From the above figure it can be easily said that, road pattern of Dhaka city is irregular. It should have
rectangular road pattern with diagonal roads for the bypass facility. As it is the capital of Bangladesh,
There are some Central Business Districts (CBD) areas where commercial activities are undertaken. So
bypass facility is very much needed in this city to prevent vehicles from moving through these districts.