Proposing a Grade Separation on Dhaka to Bogra Highway to Reduce the Accident Rate and Traffic Congestion

Abstract

Bangladesh is said to have a very high accident rate with almost 60 deaths per 10,000 every day. Within this rate, a large amount of accident takes place on the road of Dhaka-Bogra highway. The pinpointed reasons of the high rate of accident on this highway are tumor fallen of road side, uneven mounds over road, restlessness of drivers on a long journey. Statistics says, accidents take place on this highway in both night and day time. From the recorded accident data, it has been explored that, maximum of the accident occurs near to the Dhankundi food village, that is located 152 km away from Dhaka Gabtali bus stand. This place is always congested with vehicles, only two lanes‘ highways and most accident-prone site. The field survey report shows that, almost all vehicles except the local public buses and heavily loaded trucks do make a transit at this food village during the travel. Among the vehicles, almost 20% are local public bus and 40% of those are trucks. As these two categories of vehicle just passes away the Dhankundi food village, and the road has no bus bay to enter and exit the food village for other transiting vehicles, it has been observed that, most of the accident related to food village are caused due to the exit of vehicles from food village with heavily loaded, full speed trucks, either overtaking or head-to-head accident. If a grade separation can be proposed and designed in front of the food village, segregating the trucks and other vehicles that do not transit their travel to this food court, may reduce the possibility of accident in near the Dhankundi food village. This research work focuses on the proposal of grade separation for non-transiting vehicles from the transiting one