Traffic woes continue – call in the army

With traffic at its annual worst, the government called in the big guns – the military police, at least.

This month is Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast leading up to Eid, probably the most important religious holiday of the year.  I don’t profess to be any kind of expert on the religious part, but here’s what it means for traffic – everyone wants to get home early from work, so that they can be with their families to break the fast at sundown each night.  Many people go out for special events at restaurants, also right at sundown.  Sundown has been right around 7:10 – 7:15 lately, so from about 5:00 everyone is in a mad dash to get home.  Traffic, obviously, comes to a complete halt.

Also, Ramadan is a huge shopping month – everyone buys their relatives presents, often a new outfit or other special gift.  Think of it like the big shopping season between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the U.S. – there are huge sales, the malls are packed; the traffic is correspondingly awful.

So anyways, the government decided it was time to do something about the problem.  It called in the troops.  Per the BBC:

Dhaka is one of the fastest-growing, and slowest-moving cities in the world.

Its population has doubled in the past decade to reach about 15 million, but hardly any new roads have been built in all that time.

As a result the Bangladeshi capital has become immensely congested.

Military policemen took up positions on Tuesday morning at some of the major junctions to try to get things moving.

So far, it hasn’t done much good.  We just got a new GPS, which has a handy “trip calculator” feature.  Yesterday, on the way home from work, we averaged 1 (one) mile/hr.