Vice Chancellor of Brac University Prof Jamilur Reza Choudhury said this yesterday while presenting the keynote paper on 'Strategic plan for development of transport system in Dhaka city'.

The Asiatic Society of Bangladesh organised the seminar at the Society auditorium in the city on the occasion of its 14th general meeting.

Prof Jamil, the head of the 32-member advisory team of STP, which is now awaiting government approval for its implementation, said it would be very hard to manage the traffic system in future if the bodies concerned do not work in an integrated way according to the STP.

By the year 2024, the population of Dhaka Metropolitan City, Narayanganj, Munshiganj, Narsingdi, Gazipur and Manikganj would be no less than 35.9 million while the population of Dhaka metropolitan city would be at least 20 million.

"So we need to think about the future transport system from now on," added Prof Jamil.

The STP was designed to let a lot of people commute together. Right now only eight percent of the Dhaka city surface area has road coverage, whereas in a modern city the figure should have been threefold.

Citing STP, he said that six major roads were proposed to mitigate the transport problem. The first one would be from Uttara to Sayedabad via Kuril-Bishwa Road. According to the plan, there would be a lane dedicated to buses, he said.

Three metro rail roots have also been suggested inside the projected areas to meet the future challenge.

The STP was also designed for providing pedestrian safety, he said. About rickshaws, he said, they did not recommend withdrawal of rickshaws from the city.

"The facilities should increase in a way so that people do not want to ride on rickshaws," he said.

One of the major challenges at this moment is to build communications between eastern and western parts of the city. He stressed on enhancing the Bijoy Sarani with Tejgaon road and Panthapath with the Rampura bridge area through Hatirjheel to resolve the problem.

He said different development partners, including World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB), were interested in implementing the STP.

A question-answer session followed the speech of Prof Jamil. Former vice chancellor of Dhaka University Prof Emajuddin Ahmed presided over the seminar.