Now that the magnates have won and far more people have cars worldwide, your average city journey anywhere on the planet, certainly including Dhaka, is probably slower than the same trip on horseback. Having air-conditioning is probably the sole advantage to owning a car here. Often, it’d be easier, if only the weather were more inviting, to get out and walk, or perhaps crawl. Even so, a friend of mine who is an authority on transport says the actual volume of traffic is not the key problem: it’s the lack of lane control which really makes the roads tangled.
But there are other drawbacks to mass car ownership. Consider the impact that it has on our city itself. When the motor car begins to dominate our thinking, and becomes available to all, then of course we need wider roads. Once we get wider roads, more people buy cars, until you end up with cities in total gridlock. You also then need flyovers, the clearing of residential space, pushing people further and further out into the suburban sprawl. Contrast today’s concrete jungle with the idyllic evocations I keep reading of leafy Dhanmondi and Lalmatia just a couple of decades back.
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June 5th, 2007 at 12:22 am
The first thing we noticed coming out of the 42nd Street subway station was, pace yourself, a rickshaw. Yes, a rickshaw, or pedicab as the Americans call it. You get them in mid and downtown Manhattan for both sightseeing and short-trip. Miss rickshaw prem around DU campus, at 50 dollars an hour, you can take a ride with your special friend around the Central Park (at purchasing power parity terms, this is not all that expensive for people who can afford to live in Manhattan).
More seriously, rickshaws/pedicabs are becoming more popular in a number of big 1st world cities. See this Economist article for example:
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9040375
As we move to a world of carbon taxes/emissions trading and higher energy prices, oil-driven cars will become more expensive. On the other hand, as China starts producing them, cars will become cheaper. Who knows which of these effects will dominate.