A bad day to catch a flight

Mizan Khandaker, a patient with temporary vision loss in one eye, managed to get a doctor's appointment at a Chennai hospital. He along with his wife left their Banasree home at 10:00am yesterday to catch the 2:45pm flight to India from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

It's a 12km journey that on most other days, even with Dhaka's usual traffic, would have taken an hour or 90 minutes -- which would leave plenty of time for Mizan and his wife to catch their flight.

But yesterday, they could not even cross the Kuril flyover before 2:00pm, and ended up missing the flight, Mizan's nephew Faisal Alam said.

It was for the second consecutive day when thousands of commuters suffered immensely due to massive gridlocks in different parts of the city.

Some of the passengers, who planned to go abroad, said they missed their flights because they failed to reach the airport due to terrible traffic congestion on the Dhaka-Mymensingh highway.

Gazipur Metropolitan Police in a traffic bulletin on Tuesday said the situation on the highway worsened due to construction work on the Bus Rapid Transit project in Tongi's Mill Gate area in Gazipur.

Vehicles were moving in both directions on one side of the highway due to a hole dug on the highway for the flyover's pier, the bulletin said.

And when it started raining, the traffic got worse and residents of the capital faced unbearable hardships on roads.

Faisal said after trying for more than two weeks, they managed to get an appointment with a doctor for his uncle at a Chennai hospital.

But due to the horrible traffic, all their plans and preparations were ruined. Instead of catching the flight and going one step closer to solving Mizan's eye problem, they had to come back home tired and frustrated.

"Now, we have to book tickets again at a higher fare. We have to book another appointment as well," said Faisal.

Tuhin Sikder, who along with his wife was trying to catch a flight, shared their terrible experience.

He said they started around 11:45am from the city's Nakhalpara area to catch a 2:30pm flight, but got stuck in a huge tailback at Kuril flyover around 12:15pm. Vehicular movement was so slow that they crossed barely some 100 metres in the next hour and 15 minutes.

The couple had no option but to brave the weather and try to get to the airport on foot. They walked through mud, struggling through the rain with their luggage.

They walked for some 45 minutes, till they got a car to take them to the airport and were just able to catch their flight.

They were not the only ones who had problems reaching the airport, as there were very few passengers at the boarding counter of the HSIA, reports one of our correspondents who was at the scene.

Munibur Rahman, additional commissioner of DMP's Traffic Division, told The Daily Star that commuters faced such gridlocks for two straight days due to the construction on the BRT project in Gazipur. If it rains today the situation is unlikely to improve, he said.

He added that they have deployed extra manpower and have been trying to control the situation. But there is only so much they can control if the situation in Gazipur does not improve.