Chattogram has a mobility problem, and infrastructure alone won't fix it

Published : 28 October 2026

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Updated : 28 October 2026, 08:00

Farzana Islam Toma

The 4-lane, 16 km elevated expressway in Chattogram, partially opened to traffic in 2023, has not delivered its full benefits in three years. FILE PHOTO: RAJIB RAIHAN

The quality of a city’s governance is reflected in how easily its residents can move within its jurisdiction. Chattogram, the commercial capital and second largest economic hub of Bangladesh, feels like an abandoned city because of poor mobility and low safety standards. But it was not always like this. The city’s urban infrastructure was once shaped by hills, canals, and arterial corridors. It allowed people to move through the city not systematically but with relative ease and predictability. The comparatively narrow roads were reinforced by the surrounding land use, and organic canals and drainage channels supported flood management. This “arrangement” was not efficient by modern transport standards, but it worked well enough to sustain the city as the country’s growing commercial hub.Today, moving through Chattogram often means sitting in traffic, navigating disconnected roads, and feeling unsafe amid congestion and chaos. That cities will expand is inevitable, but this dysfunctionality only indicates an institutional neglect towards developing an integrated transport system as the city grew. Over the past decade, Chattogram has witnessed mega infrastructure projects like flyovers, an elevated expressway, highways, and major expansion of the existing roads. While some of them were needed for better connectivity, all of them were built without developing an end-to-end ecosystem to ensure smooth functionality. Flyovers were built with flawed designs, including unsafe curves, and without operational feeder roads. The expressway was built and opened for public use three years ago with all nine of its access ramps inaccessible; only six ramps were recently opened for use while the rest are expected to be accessible in two months. Meanwhile, roads have been expanded without keeping the drainage system in mind. In all these mega infrastructures, one common aspect has been missing from consideration: public movement. The Chattogram Development Authority (CDA) has undertaken 10 development projects worth more than Tk 14,874 crore, including six transport projects involving road widening, new road connections, an outer ring road extension, and the proposed Oxygen Moar flyover. But what is the city’s mobility strategy connecting these individual projects? The Oxygen-Quwaish development project carries a proposed cost of Tk 2,024 crore. The issue of concern here is not whether the intersection needs intervention but whether another flyover or wider roads will resolve the underlying causes of congestion. This also raised an unexamined but important policy question: what problems have flyovers and expressways actually solved in Chattogram? According to urban transport planning principles, elevated roads can function properly only when they are embedded within an integrated transport system: a clear traffic hierarchy, well-planned access corridors, reliable public transit, and safe pedestrian infrastructure. These preconditions were not all applied while implementing these grade-separated roads. Not only were the designs of these flyovers flawed, but the intersections and roads underneath were not rebuilt keeping both humans and vehicles in mind. No wonder that the traffic congestion did not just trouble the junctions but also all the access and exit points, as well as the surface roads under the flyovers. The elevated expressway followed a similar pattern, prioritising speed over safety, ignoring traffic demand analysis and public transport integration, and enabling the construction of unplanned ramps. The consequences were not surprising: fatal crashes due to high speed on the upside and clogged roads below.These infrastructures may improve travel time for a limited group of users, but do little to improve the overall mobility. Pedestrians, who are major stakeholders, were excluded from all planning considerations, and footpaths became fragmented, leading to open drains. Also, despite earlier planning recommendations, the movement of freight to and from the Chattogram Port remains a significant challenge for the city’s transport network. The port-bound trucks and industrial vehicles share road space with local traffic, resulting in congestion and delays that affect both urban mobility and economic efficiency. In a port city where the majority of daily trips are short, mixed-mode, and human-centred, shouldn’t large infrastructure investment be evaluated by how effectively they integrate freight corridors, truck terminals, port access, public transport, and safe pedestrian movement into a coordinated citywide mobility strategy?The frustrating part is that Chattogram has not lacked transport assessments or planning recommendations. Earlier studies supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), alongside government masterplans, identified weak coordination between agencies, inadequate traffic demand analysis, and the absence of an effective citywide multimodal transport framework. More recently, the CDA’s draft Chattogram Metropolitan Master Plan 2025-2050 has proposed an integrated transport system combining modern buses, commuter rail and water buses, alongside improved terminals, traffic signals and parking management. It also recognises that congestion cannot be solved by increasing road capacity alone. But a master plan’s value does not lie in what it proposes on paper. Individual investments should be prioritised, designed and implemented in accordance with its wider vision. To fully implement the master plan, the megaprojects and the proposed public transport network, freight management and pedestrian infrastructure must complement each other.Successful cities around the world have shifted their policies from car-centric expansion to integrated spatial mobility solutions that prioritise public transport, pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, freight efficiency, and traffic demand management. Cities like Copenhagen, Oslo, and Rotterdam have recognised that urban competitiveness depends on how reliably people and goods can move. To correct its course, Chattogram needs a fundamental policy shift from speed and construction to safety, accessibility and coordination. Doing so requires asking difficult questions about past investments and whether the port city needs more mega infrastructure or better administrative policy movement. Until those questions are answered honestly, the city will continue to build without planning, and despite decades of investment, mobility here will continue to suffer.Farzana Islam Toma*is an architect and road safety professional working as a consultant for the sustainable city programme at World Resources Institute. She can be reached at Farzana.Toma@wri.org.****Views expressed in this article are the author's own.***FollowThe Daily Star Opinion on Facebookfor the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see ourguidelines for submission.