Bangladesh mulls introducing integrated traffic management system

DHAKA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- The Bangladeshi government is planning to introduce the Integrated Traffic Management and Incident Detection System (ITMIDS) to ensure safer highways, an official said.

The ITMIDS will be undertaken to detect speed and traffic violations and enable traffic flow analysis, while the real-time monitoring will be replicated along some of the highway corridor pilots, said Roads and Highways Division (RHD) Additional Chief Engineer Md Abdullah Al Mamun.

The system will coincide with the National Highway Safe Corridor Demonstration Project Sites side by side CCTV, video and audio feeds, as well as Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) technology.

The government will introduce the ITMIDS under the multi-sector Bangladesh Road Safety Project, which will be implemented by the RHD, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the Bangladesh Police and the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).

The project costs 480.87 million U.S. dollars. The World Bank will provide 357.91 million U.S. dollars as credit, while the rest of 122.96 million U.S. dollars will come from government treasury.

Mamun said the project is now waiting for approval from the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC).

He informed that the World Bank has already approved 357.91 million U.S. dollars of financing to help Bangladesh improve road safety and reduce fatalities and injuries from road crashes in selected high-risk highways and district roads.

The Road Safety Project will help Bangladesh achieve the Sustainable Development Goals on road safety by 2030, he added.

He said the project is aimed at building road safety management capacity and achieving targeted reduction in traffic fatalities and serious injuries in Bangladesh.