Port city needs foot-over bridges

Every day, Laila Begum, a resident of High Level Road in the Lalkhan Bazar area, takes her daughter, an eighth grader, to school in the Jamal Khan area.
To reach her school, both Laila and her daughter must cross the busy Lalkhan Bazar intersection.
“I accompany my daughter to and from school. Since we don’t have a private vehicle, we rely on public transport. To catch a bus heading towards Jamal Khan Road, we must cross the wide Lalkhan Bazar intersection, which spans approximately 20 feet and has one-way traffic on its two-lane road,” Laila said.
“The road is so wide that it takes at least 15 seconds to cross from one side to the other, and vehicles constantly pass by, making it dangerous for pedestrians in the middle of the road. Every day, we risk our lives,” she added.
Like Laila, many others face daily struggles at the aforementioned intersections due to the lack of foot-over bridges.
Pedestrians in different intersections of Chattogram city are forced to cross the roads putting their lives at risk as most intersections do not have footbridges.
Currently, Chattogram city has only 12 footbridges at various intersections.
Locals have pointed out that footbridges are urgently needed at several busy intersections across the city, including Chawkbazar Gulzar, Nawab Sirajuddaula Road, GEC, Kotwali, Bahaddarhat, Sholoshahar Gate No.2, Wasa, Lalkhan Bazar, Dewan Hat, Chowmuhuni, Agrabad Badamtol, Oxygen, Anderkilla, Laldighi, AK Khan, Alankar, Tulatoli, Mohora, Jalalabad, and Kazir Dewri intersections.
SM Abu Tayab, president of Nirapad Sarak Chai’s Chattogram unit, emphasised the urgent need to construct footbridges in around 40 locations across the city.
According to sources, CCC conducted a survey in 2020, including a feasibility study for the construction of footbridges in various areas.
The survey revealed that 93.4 percent of respondents expressed a desire to use those.
Following that, CCC launched an initiative to construct 38 footbridges across different locations. This project is part of the larger “Development of Various Roads Including Airport Road and Important Infrastructure Development Under the Jurisdiction of CCC.”
CCC’s acting chief engineer, Shahin-ul-Islam Chowdhury, said 30 percent of the project’s infrastructural work has already been completed. Construction on the foot-over bridges at three locations — GEC, Jalalabad, and Mohora — has begun, and the tender process for 25 more bridges is underway.
Regarding the delay in construction, Chowdhury said that there have been some obstacles, such as the need to relocate utility service lines from Wasa, PDB, and Karnaphuli Gas.
He mentioned that CCC has already sent letters to the authorities concerned to expedite the removal of these utilities to allow construction to proceed smoothly.
ESCALATOR FOOTBRIDGE
In January 2020, CCC installed the city’s only escalator-equipped footbridge at a cost of approximately Tk 4 crore.
However, the bridge was operational for just two months after its inauguration before being rendered inoperative for over three years.
The then mayor of CCC, AJM Nasir Uddin, inaugurated the bridge on January 30, 2020. However, after only two months of use, its operations were halted due to the pandemic, and it has remained out of service ever since.
A senior CCC official said the electricity consumption required to operate the escalator was too high, making it unsustainable in the long term. When asked why this issue wasn’t considered during the planning of the project, the official could not provide a satisfactory answer.
SM Abu Tayab criticised the CCC for spending public money on a project that proved to be unfeasible, especially when the city has yet to construct any footbridges at busy intersections in the past decade.