[sustran] Dhaka conference on cycle rickshaws

SUSTRAN Resource Centre sustran at po.jaring.my
Tue Jul 21 11:25:56 JST 1998


We heard the following news item on BBC World Service News this
morning. 
Paul Barter and Sreela Kolandai
SUSTRAN Resource Centre
---------------------------------------------------
BBC World News.  Tues 21 July, 1998

Does Dhaka need rickshaws? 

The Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, has more cycle rickshaws than any
other city in the world, and now a conference has started there to
look at the future of these brightly painted, human-powered vehicles.
Frances Harrison reports from Dhaka: 

Every day rickshaws in Dhaka make seven million 7m passenger trips,
covering 11 million miles - nearly double the output of the London
underground. 

More than half the vehicles on the roads of the city are rickshaws,
providing employment for at least a million people. 

But planning officials have always held the humble rickshaw in
disdain. They see it as a symbol of under-development. 

As a result there's never been proper research into improving the
design of the vehicle, whose gears are set too high and whose
suspension is poor. 

Too often the approach has been to suggest banning rickshaws
altogether. 

But it's not at all clear that would solve the city's traffic jams
and it would leave a lot of impoverished people without employment. 

Instead, this conference, jointly funded by the United Nations and
Dhaka City Corporation, is looking at ways of segregating fast and
slow-moving vehicles, using separate lanes and special underpasses
for rickshaws. 

And it is reviewing a training project for rickshaw pullers which
taught them to recognise road signs and also offered them basic
accident insurance. 

In one of the worst polluted and fastest growing cities in the world,
a small minority feels the environmentally friendly rickshaw should
still have a future. 

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_136000/13607
4.stm



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