Class, cars, bikers and walker…..

Afsan Chowdhury writes for DOT : 
I remember the Dhaka of the 60s when it was almost a likeable city, lazy, rainy and with many trees. Cars were few, rickshaws dominated and the middle class also grew around that placid culture. It was a city where the really rich were Pakistanis and so if you didn’t know any rich person it was Ok. After all you didn’t care what ‘they’ did. Rickshaws were fine.
People actually didn’t walk that much because rickshaw was so easily available and for longer distances people used buses which were plenty, not so well stacked and eminently usable. Walking was for those who couldn’t afford buses and rickshaw and for fun and pleasure. That city began to change after 1971.
Soon rickshaw fares rose, bus ticket prices did also as did everything else. And soon cars made their entry in a big way not seen before. But then Dhaka hadn’t seen such wealth before either.
The car culture and post 1971
The days of the rickshaw began to decline as cars rose and buses rose and the middle began to struggle to survive. Investment was not made in public transport, the critical sector. The result was a decline in public transport, whether motorized or not. Did that mean more walking ?
But the city is not planned for walkers or even to encourage them. The concept of walking is limited to leisure, the park variety. The biggest horde of walkers are those who slug it out in the morning or the evening not for going to work or at least part of it but retired types looking for health.
Of the totally available pavements on the mains streets, the busy hours are taken over by motorbikes and not pedestrians. Citizens do try to walk to catch a bus or a rickshaw but parked cars and motorbikes who used it as an extension of the road dominate. It’s unsafe for pedestrians but more significantly shows the hierarchy of rights. Yes, motorbikes are at the bottom but pedestrians are even lower. They basically don’t exist in the public imagination of the city planner and private ones of the ruling class.
I myself do use a pathway to reach my workplace which is close. I notice that most who use it are buas from the nearby slums, low end shop workers and car drivers waling to work etc. The middle class doesn’t walk to office as it’s not possible and the middle upper and upper class have their cars.
Class and cars
So in effect, we are looking at the death of the non-motorized society that is those who walk. Rickshaws function without any design, almost by stealth, buses are so packed that they are exercises in acute discomfort and harassment and so only cars make sense.
But even cars are also not vehicles of comfort. As recent data shows, cycle move quicker and many younger people are moving to it. That’s great but how many can and will because its seen as young people’s mode of transport and for older ones, it’s not physically always possible.
Motorbikes then ? Certainly, they are better than cars and the popularity of Pathao are good examples of that. But is it a planned effort or something that has emerged because the GOB has no interest how this class travels and the people have had no other option other than do what is best for them, approval or no approval.
In the end, the traffic sector is a good example of society’s approved hierarchy of privileges. The Poor walk, the middle buses or bikes, the upper middle motorbikes, the upper drives cars.
To each his own.
The writer is a journalist, a media professional, a researcher and a social activist. Email: afsan.c@gmail.com