Mixed signals in Dhaka: no laughing matter

Dhaka traffic cop -- keeping things under control.

 Some years ago, a particularly innovative mayor in Bogota decided to improve pedestrian safety with what I’ll call the “playground method”.  He hired over 400 mimes to stand on street corners and mock anyone who jaywalked.  People were embarrassed by the attention and quickly began to obey the traffic signals with much more frequency.  Peer pressure at its best!

Anyone who has visited Dhaka knows that we take traffic jams to a new level.  You don’t have to spend long on the streets to realize that a major contributor to the traffic is the chaos—there are no stop signs, few drivers abide the traffic signals, and there are vehicles of all shapes and sizes in the road, not to mention the throngs of pedestrians.  Gridlock often occurs spontaneously and because space is so tight, undoing it takes time.

Having spent enough time moving from point A to B to get some good thinking time in, I casually suggested that adding some more traffic signals would go a long way to improving traffic.   Little did I know….

Dhaka got its first street lights in the 1980s.  At that time, it was a far smaller city.  My friends who grew up in Dhaka talk about how there were so few cars on the highways, they used to play cricket on them.  Most of the traffic was rickshaws and trucks; there were few private buses and cars in those days.  Busy intersections had a low-level police officer, armed with a whistle (I picture the equivalent of a crosswalk attendant).

The Dhaka Metropolitan Police established their Traffic Police unit in 1976.  The changing nature of the roads required a dedicated administration.  As their website describes it,

The origin of modern traffic police can be traced to Dhaka city in 1940s. Horse drawn and rickshaws became so congested that police took control of busy intersections and used to maintain traffic with whistle and by waving arms and hand signals. The advent of the automobile intensified the need for traffic police. Technology improved and automated traffic signals came into play. Traffic police officers spent less time in making sure traffic is kept moving and more time in enforcing laws designed to prevent accidents.

Traffic police were also innovative about problem solving.  It was difficult for them to enforce some laws—for example, validating rickshaw licenses.  Forgeries were everywhere and police had no way to tell whether a license was an original or a copy.  They began to charge rickshaw drivers operating within their areas.  Trucks, especially those with heavy loads, had to pay up to drive through the city.  Street vendors, even beggars, had to give a portion of their earnings to the traffic police, for access to the area.

Traffic cop with a yellow vest doing a GREAT job
keeping traffic under control.

Traffic lights were poorly maintained—many stopped working or the bulbs were stolen.  In the mid-1990s, the government created a new cadre of traffic police—this time wearing a highly visible yellow vest.  They were higher ranking than the previous traffic cops; they had great authority to write tickets and collect fines.  The job was highly coveted; traffic cops could make a killing from their businesses on the side.  Their superiors wanted in, and started naming monthly “take” that they expected from the police on the street.  Promotions, transfers, and much more was dependent on one’s ability to pay up. An honest cop had no chance.  This had become a lucrative extraction industry; very profitable.

This is normal commuting for many.

Yet still, no one could get the good people of Dhaka to abide the traffic lights.  The Asian Development Bank supported Bangladesh in a huge city beautification project—sidewalks, landscaping, and traffic lights.  Signals were promptly renovated across the city.  Still, drivers ignored them.  When the army came into power in 2008, for a few weeks, soldiers with arms replaced the traffic cops.  At first, it seemed effective—drivers seemed to heed their signals.  But within two weeks, their fear had subsided and it was traffic as usual.  Journalists wrote, “What next?  Tanks at every intersection to keep us in line?”

I’m not sure what the exact salary of a traffic cop is, but my guess is that it’s pretty low, even by Bangladesh standards.  As of 2006, there were over 3,500 traffic cops in Dhaka.   In 2011, they collected a reported 250 million taka ($3.2 mil) in fines (obviously calculating the unreported is a bit more difficult).  I took a rickshaw a few weeks ago and the driver told me that the normal rent for sitting in this area was tk 100 ($1.25).  Given that two thirds of Bangladesh’s population live on under $2 a day, this is non-trivial.  It’s also a deeply entrenched racket at this point, funding student politics and much more.  For the long-distance trucks, there’s even a tightly coordinated system of territories and practices.  When a driver pays a bribe, he gets a token, which gets him to the other side of the city free and clear (he can show it to anyone else that tries to ask for payment).  You think these cops want off the streets?  No way!

When I look at the intersections, I see a system that can be automated—traffic cops all but eliminated by functional traffic signals that everyone follows.  But I never guessed that it could be so complicated to try to implement such an initiative.  A good reminder that it’s easy to see a simple system and miss the less visible dynamics that define the situation, and make the “easy fixes” completely useless. Better to assume that if it really were that easy, it would have been done by now!  So start asking questions.  And appreciate what an incredible feat it is to create a system in which everyone actually adheres to stoplights!

Jump on the bandwagon and respect
traffic signals!

My (cheeky) suggestion: convince drivers that it would be faster AND cheaper to drive if they followed the traffic signals, eliminating the need for so many traffic police posted at intersections. 

Thanks to Shazzad for the background information!