Rural roads served their life. Now they need an upgrade

Infographic: TBS

Thirty years back, Nazrul Islam, a rural vet  used to go see his patients riding his squeaky bicycle. The road meandered through the tree-shaded villages dotted with thatched huts. An occasional rickshaw van or bicycle passed Nazrul in those days and that was how it was in any village in the country.

Since then, the roads have been surfaced with tarmac. Now, traffic on the road includes battery-run rickshaws, bhot bhoti and nosimon– locally improvised transport vehicles, cars and heavy construction vehicles. Nazrul, a regular commuter of the 7km road from Uttara Ganabhaban in Natore to Patul via Thakur Laxmikul, now rides a motorcycle. He says the traffic volume has increased mainly in the last 10 years and with that the traffic congestion as well. The road is filled with countless potholes, two cars passing each other have to come to a crawl and one has to give way to the other, getting off the metalled surface onto the earthen shoulder. Besides, the road has too many risky bends causing frequent accidents.

This road represents the 3.38 lakh kilometre rural road network connecting the rural growth centres such as district, upazila and union headquarters, local markets and farms.

The road network mainly took shape in the 1990s and played a key role in transforming the social and economic landscape of Bangladesh in the past two decades.

The Local Government Engineering Department (LGED), the state-run engineering agency who built the road network and now looks after it, says the roads, without upgradation, will become inadequate to serve the next phase of development in the years ahead.

The LGED has already prepared a plan and rule book for upgrading rural roads to meet the future economic and connectivity needs, said Monzur Sadeque, project director of "My Village – My Town."

The new LGED Road Design Standard has planned for increasing traffic pressure on rural roads, which can be used to design and build the roads for the next 20 years, he told The Business Standard.

Rural roads opened new vistas of growth

According to the LGED, the existing rural roads fall in four categories – upazila roads, union roads, inter-village roads and intravillage roads.

The easier access to the first mile – rural roads to union headquarters, markets, educational institutions and factories by main roads – has made life easy for rural farmers. It helps them get fair prices for their produce and also ensures access to modern farming technologies.

For example, take the case of Shatish Halder, a guava farmer of Bhimruli in southern Bangladesh district Jhalakathi. After loading his boat with the, he rows to the local floating guava market.

"Five to six years ago, I used to dump guavas into the canal when there were not enough customers. But the prices are now good as the new roads bring enough buyers," he says.

Another Bhimruli farmer Sawpon Kumar said he is now able to send his limes to Dhaka and other cities.

The southern region is well known for hog plums, betel nuts and ample fish harvest. The expanding road network to remote villages ensures fair prices to farmers and fishermen and farmers are increasing production by bringing in farming equipment to distant areas.

According to the LGED, the first mile represents the infrastructural and mental challenges of coming from the village to the main road. The rural connectivity removes the mental barriers and encourages farmers to walk two kilometres or half an hour to reach main roads.

According to fisheries data, fish production has edged up more than 70% in the past 10 years thanks to village hatcheries. Annual fish production in FY21 stood at 46 lakh tonnes from 27 lakh tonnes in FY09. Poultry power has sent the annual meat production to 92.65 lakh tonnes from 36.20 lakh tonnes ten years ago.

The first mile has also helped the non-agricultural economy thrive remarkably. Low-income people who previously had to depend solely on farming now have other income avenues.

The first mile made education and healthcare delivery easy. Rural teachers and health workers no longer have to endure a strenuous trip to attend work. For students and patients, schools and hospitals had never been so close until now. The sight of school children walking to their schools in groups is one of the most uplifting scenes in rural areas.

A network built on donated lands

Land acquisition is the biggest challenge and the costliest aspect of road construction in every country. But the LGED's 3.5 lakh kilometres countrywide rural road network, including paved and unpaved roads, was built on land donated by people.

The social initiative in the 1980s and 1990s for motivating people to donate land for roads eventually benefited the locals as it had been able to cut through the lengthy and costly acquisitions, said LGED officials.

The roads on donated land prioritised fast construction at a minimal cost, but the infrastructure had to compromise on geometric standards and safety issues thanks to land availability, according to the officials.

They said building such a vast road network through social participation is unique and unprecedented in the world.

However, the authorities are currently acquiring land for widening the roads. According to the new LGED policy, the acquisition will enable the authorities to straighten roads with too many risky bends. Besides, new roads will be leaner and emphasise the geometric standards. Geometric standards would ensure safety of drivers and vehicles as well as comfort and efficiency of those using the road.

Md Nurullah, former additional chief engineer of the LGED, said the rural road infrastructure was developed extensively across the country in the 1980s to connect the growth centres. The development roadmap was adequate to meet the needs of the 1980s and afterwards, he added.

"But it now requires a new integrated physical planning thanks to a massive socioeconomic change over the past few decades," the former LGED engineer said, stressing that the new planning should be focusing on rural road design and thickness considering the use, traffic load, soil type and category of the roads.

Hossain Zillur Rahman, an economist and also a former adviser to the caretaker government, said the rural roads were built as feeder roads to bring traffic to major urban areas. The prime goal of the road network was to connect the villages to cities.    

"But the villages are now witnessing a massive urbanisation as economic zones and other industrial estates are being set up in faraway districts. We have to connect the rural roads with the integrated road network in the future," he told The Business Standard.

The economist said the integrated road network must be planned and lands will have to be acquired if required. Unless there is a well-planned traffic network, he said random land acquisition for roads will hurt agriculture.   

Roads overburdened, pedestrians sidelined

En route to port city Chattogram, people from southern districts Bhola and Barishal take the Motirhat-Torabganj road in Lakshmipur. Regular commuters say though the 8.6km route, which is just 12 feet wide, is a union road, its traffic service is akin to a national highway.

In a recent count, the road was witnessed to carry 205 small, medium and heavy vehicles in just half an hour. Besides, there were hundreds of pedestrians on it.

The people had to step aside precariously every time two three-wheelers crossed on the narrow road. Each time two heavy vehicles faced from the opposite direction, they would almost stop and cross very slowly.

Locals said the traffic pressure on the route tripled in the last 10 years. The heavy traffic load tore down the asphalt, causing countless cracks and potholes to develop. Those remain unpatched for years, let alone road upgradation.

Local upazila engineer Sohel Anwar said currently there is no plan to widen the road. But the next repair would increase the asphalt thickness considering the heavy traffic load.

Jasim Uddin, superintending engineer (Planning) of the LGED said the department is currently working on upgrading upazila and union roads with more than 500 commercial vehicles per day to double-lane. There are about 30,000km of such roads in the country. All these roads are being expanded according to priority, he told TBS.

LGED officials said they are now emphasising climate resilient rural road networks. For this, coastal belt rural roads are being built with different designs.

It plans building bus bays and passenger sheds for busier roads. For road safety, speed limiters, traffic signs and road marking are being installed at different points.

Looking beyond the horizon

The rural road network is in need of a transformation as the country takes off to be a lower-middle income nation from the low-income one.

From the previous "Rural Access" concept, the LGED has recently switched to the "Rural Transport" mode to accommodate the increasing traffic volume.

LGED officials said the upazila roads are being gradually upgraded as double-lane roads by following the geometric standards. Besides, roads connecting industrial areas, economic zones, land ports, power plants and tourist spots are being upgraded.

No land acquisition is currently being considered for village roads. Instead, the "My Village – My Town" project has proposed wider embankments for village roads without new land.

The wider embankments will accommodate social forestry on the slopes as the gains will be distributed among the land owners, road and tree maintenance workers and respective Union Parishad.

Officials said the LGED now has five road widening projects including two funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank. There are another two projects by the ADB and the World Bank in the pipeline.

TBS correspondents Sana Ullah Sanu in Lakshmipur, Bulbul Habib in Rajshahi and M Jahirul Islam Jewel in Barishal contributed to the report.