Above are two pictures of a highway service area where motorists park their cars, take rest, go to toilets and buy souvenirs. However, the opening news does not say anything about service areas.
At least, one or two service areas in each direction are needed for this Dhaka-Mawa-Bhanga expressway. It is about 60 km and will take about 2.5 hours to travel. All developed countries have service areas for motorists and bus passengers.
55 km road cannot be reached in 27 minutes. One has to go more than 122km per hour which should not be encouraged. The Highway department should limit the speed at 80 kph for the faster right-hand lane and it must mobilize Highway Patrol/Police to catch speed offenders.
Cameras/speedometers should be placed with a proper recording system to deny bribes by Police for which BD police are world-famous.
The highest speed limit of the expressway is 150 KM/H as no obstacle is expected on the highway. Speed limit of the highway is 80 KM/H instead.
As you are talking about road safety BUET had found some security flaws in the road. But it appears Awami League is opening it without addressing the issues to along with the Mujib Borsho.
Safety flaws detected on Mawa highway
Inauguration by PM likely in March
Shahin Akhter | Published: 01:42, Feb 18,2020
https://www.newagebd.net/article/99909/safety-flaws-detected-on-mawa-highway
A measurement tape shows that the gap between the barrier and the concrete divider is over 10 inches on the Dhaka-Mawa Highway at Shologhar in Sreenagar, Munshiganj. The photo was taken on Monday. — Sourav Losker
The government is scheduled to open the Dhaka–Mawa–Bhanga four-lane highway next month with ‘ineffective road safety measures’ as experts have detected engineering faults on the road.
Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology experts found ‘faulty’ and ‘accident-prone’ features in the already-built divider system of the under-construction highway.
While investigating a recent fatal accident on the 55-kilometre-long highway they found significant gap between the crash or safety barrier and the divider’s concrete block which would increase the fatality rates in accidents, they said.
Roads and Highways Department project officials admitted the faults and said that they would conduct an audit on the highway before its inauguration but could not give any specific timeline for correcting the divider system.
Meanwhile, during a visit by New Age to the highway on Sunday non-motorised and slow-moving vehicles were seen to ply the highway not using the designated service lanes for them.
Buses and trucks were also seen overtaking other vehicles at different points on the road.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina is likely to inaugurate the highway in March on the occasion of the birth centenary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding president of Bangladesh, said RHD officials.
The RHD and the Bangladesh Army have been jointly implementing the four-lane highway project since June 2016.
The highway is being built under a two-phase project to improve the road from Jatrabari Intersection (including Ekuria–Babubazar link road) to Pachchar–Bhanga in Faridpur through Mawa Road of Dhaka–Khulna (N-8) Highway into a four-lane highway with separate lanes for slow-moving vehicles.
The project was approved by the executive committee of the National Economic Council in May 2016 and was scheduled to be completed by June this year.
The revised cost of the project reached around Tk 10,900 crore at present from the original Tk 6,252 crore because of additional components.
The engineering faults in the highway came to light as a result of the recent accident in question.
In the accident, nine people were killed when a Swadhin Express Paribahan bus hit a microbus coming with a wedding party from the opposite direction on the highway at Khoiyagaon of Sholghar under Sreenagar upazila in Munshiganj on November 22, 2019.
The dead were passengers and the driver of the microbus.
A letter signed by the Gazipur region superintendent of the highway police was sent to the BUET Accident Research Institute on November 27 with the request for a detailed report on the investigation into the accident.
After carrying out the investigation with a four-member team, the institute submitted the report to the highway police blaming the bursting of a bus wheel and the use of a modified wheel on the bus as the primary and secondary causes of the accident.
It blamed the bus driver’s lack of skill and some engineering faults as tertiary causes.
The ARI investigation report observed that following the collision between the two vehicles the safety barrier along the divider bent but the barrier was set up about 10 inches inside the divider at the accident spot and there were no traffic signs, road marking and speed limits on the highway up to Hashara in Munshiganj.
The report said that the edge of the barrier and the road median should be parallel and only then the barrier could absorb the highest amount of force during accidents and on this highway the microbus could touch the barrier partially and hence failed to pass the full impact force on to it.
On Sunday, New Age found that the gap between the barrier and the concrete divider was around 20 inches along the Hashara filing station, around 15 inches along the Ekuria stretch in Dakkhin Keraniganj and around six inches on Dhaleswari Bridge and at the Khandakar intersection of West Jurain in Shyampur.
Besides, very few traffic signs and speed-limit marks were found to have been set up on the highway.
‘The engineer or the monitoring agency or the implementing organisation concerned is responsible for not setting up the barrier properly on the road,’ the report remarked.
The Accident Research Institute recommended that the barrier and the median should be parallel and an inspection or road safety audit should be carried out as the highway would be a high-speed and busy road.
ARI assistant professor Kazi Md Shifun Newaz on Saturday said that the fatality rate in the November accident was high because after the bus hit the microbus the latter’s wheels got stuck into the 10-inch gap between the barrier and the divider causing almost all of the microbus passengers to have died.
He further said that had the barrier and the divider been parallel then the microbus could have gone backward or braked inside the barrier and fewer people could have been killed.
‘People will drive fast on this highway and that is why these ineffective road safety features should be immediately corrected before inaugurating the project,’ Shifun added.
RHD additional chief engineer (Dhaka Zone) and the project director from the department, Md Sabuj Uddin Khan, on Sunday said that road safety audits were usually conducted on existing roads in order to identify safety hazards.
They would also conduct a road safety audit and implement the remedies before the inauguration, he added.
He, however, cited the Indian Roads Congress guideline which allows a maximum of four inches gap between the barrier and the divider.
Asked about the wider gaps on the road than that stipulated by the Indian standard, he said, ‘Of course we will discuss the higher gaps between the barrier and the divider with the authorities concerned.’
But he could not give any specific time when this work would be done.
Replying to a question, he said that he would not call this highway a complete expressway right now as such an expressway should be fully access-controlled with outgoing and incoming points, toll plaza, service areas and wider service roads.
He also said that the link road between Babubazar and Ekuria would be completed by 2020 while the works on the approach roads of the Padma Multipurpose Bridge at Mawa and Pachchar within five to six months.
, these guys should do some reading...
