Essay on Traffic Pollution in South Asia

The article deals with the traffic problems and related pollutions which has been a severe problem for Bangladesh in last many years. For reaching a place which should usually take 20 minutes, people have start for that place around one hour. Such is the seriousness of the problem in the country and especially in its urban areas and capital Dhaka. The reason for this problems are scarce resources, very meagre investment for development of transport facilities in the country, such as infrastructure and vehicles, fast increase in the demand of transport options, large number of slow and non-motorized vehicles which operate on the roads, absence of implementation of efficient and effective traffic management policies etc. These problems are being responsible for the country wide transport related problems which all the urban areas of the country are experiencing for few decades.

The increased number of vehicles has also started causing environment related problems. Lack of stringent rules and policies regarding the emission control and a growing carbon footprint have added to the existing problems. The inhabitants of the country are badly getting affected from the poisonous vehicle emissions and these are causing different kind of diseases amongst them. Lung cancer and other fatal diseases are being caused by the air pollutions caused by the emissions by this huge number of traffic. Adding to the problem there is no detailed data in the hands of the government or the policy makers concerning traffic congestion and pollution problems for urban areas of Bangladesh which may enable them to start acting against these problems by designing and implementing different rules and regulations like another developed and developing countries.

The following figures will be enough to prove the seriousness of vehicle emissions related problems in the country's capital that is Dhaka. The daily amount of total emissions of different poisonous elements like NOx, HC, CO, PM, and SOx in the city are estimated to be around 42 tons per day, 39 tons per day, 314 tons per day, 14 tons per day, and 42 tons per day, respectively. These figures are way above the accepted global level and immediate measures should be taken to deal with this problem.

Evaluation of Challenges Involved

The challenges those are involved in the traffic related pollution and other serious health care issues of Bangladesh are:

1. Increased air pollution in Bangladesh due to the old cars and vehicles on the city roads.
2. Increased congestion problems due to abundance of slow moving non motorized vehicles on the city roads.
3. The increased number of road accidents due to the inefficient and ineffective traffic system of the country as well its capital city.
4. Absolute absence of any policy for dealing with all these problems.
5. Water log during the monsoon which increases the problem by multiple times.

Likely Responses to These Challenges by Policy Makers

There are several steps the Government of Bangladesh can take for dealing with these problems. The starting step can be implementation of a committee which may go for a detailed checking of country's air quality standard. As it has been already discussed, absence of detailed policies dealing with air quality regulations should also be done away with. Immediate formation and implementation of rules and regulations governing the emission level and carbon footprint has to be done. On the basis of these policies environmental impact assessment can be performed. The Government should also encourage surveys and studies on national air pollutants estimates and air quality measurements in the country. These will help in answering the questions related to the pollution and traffic problem. The need for committees which will take care of this questions and answers is immediate. Hence the government should immediately form a national steering committee which will be comprised of experts on this field to start thinking about way out of these problems. Creation of guiding rules for the city planners, engineers, policy makers should be done immediately. This will help these people with a guideline regarding how to minimize the problem related to traffic pollution. National Air Quality Standard has to set as soon as possible by the Government.

The usage of auto rickshaw has to be restricted in Dhaka city. They can follow India and implement the rule of keeping only Liquid Petroleum Gas fuelled auto rickshaws on the roads of the city. Otherwise they can come with a plan of equivalent and efficient mode of transport. This will make sure that people who earn their livelihood related to auto rickshaw driving do not get unemployed.