RHD to introduce country’s 1st road operation unit: Highway management set to improve
The Roads and Highways Department (RHD) is going establish a dedicated Road Operation Unit (ROU) for the first time to manage and monitor a national highway efficiently.
The unit will include three ROU field offices and a headquarter in Dhaka, three axle-load control stations (ALCS) and Intelligent Transport System.
The department has hired a Bangladesh-China joint venture firm for constructing the facilities on the 260-km Joydebpur-Rangpur highway and their operation and maintenance for four years.
National Development Engineers Ltd (NDE) of Bangladesh and FiberHome Telecommunication Technologies Co Ltd of China will construct the facilities within 18 months for Tk 145.29 crore.
The operation and maintenance will cost Tk 6.66 crore for four years, said officials.
RHD engineers said currently they construct or expand roads under different projects and usually those are maintained by different offices.
According to RHD engineers, the country currently has no mechanism for road operation to ensure proper maintenance and utilisation of roads.
"We should have introduced this much earlier. However, it is good that a move has been finally taken," said an RHD engineer on condition of anonymity.
RHD Chief Engineer AKM Manir Hossain Pathan and NDE Managing Director Rizwan Mustafiz have signed the contract at RHD headquarters in Dhaka yesterday.
On behalf of NDE, its two subsidiaries -- NDE Solutions and MCC Ltd -- will implement the project. They are expected to start working after Eid-ul-Fitr, Riyad SA Husain, managing director of NDE Solutions, told this correspondent yesterday.
ELEMENTS OF ROU
RHD has almost completed expanding 70 km of the highway into four lanes, with two service lanes on both sides, from Gazipur's Joydebpur to Tangail's Elenga under the SASEC-1 Road Connectivity Project.
Similarly, works are currently ongoing to turn the 190-km road from Alenga to Rangpur into a four-lane highway, with two service lanes under SASEC-2 project, at the cost of Tk 1,666,2.38 crore.
Three ROU field offices would be established at Pakulla of Tangail, Mokamtola of Bogura and Islampur of Rangpur, and its headquarters at RHD's Mirpur office.
Three axle-load control stations would be established at Pakulla, Bogura's Mohastan and Islampur.
The stations would have a "weigh-in motion system", implying that the equipment would be able to weigh any running vehicle (moving at a speed of 60 km per hour), said Waliur Rahman, director of SASEC-2 road improvement project and also RHD additional chief engineer.
Vehicles would not require to be halted at stations. However, a barrier would be raised if any vehicle carry more than the permitted level of weight.
Overloading is considered one of the major reasons behind the damage of roads and bridges. Only two axle-load control stations are currently operational on Dhaka-Chattogram highway.
The joint-venture firm will install ITS for efficiently managing and monitoring the highway.
Under ITS, modern information and communication technologies are used to facilitate transport infrastructure and vehicles to improve traffic management and safety and reduce traffic jams and road maintenance costs, said engineers.
RHD is set to introduce ITS for the first time on a pilot basis on a 40-km section of Dhaka-Mawa Expressway, under a proposed project worth Tk 115 crore.
In that case, Joydebpur-Rangpur highway would the first road where ITS would be formally introduced.
Large LED displays will be set up on the highway to notify road commuters about changes in the road and weather conditions. They can also get the information through a mobile app and a dedicated website, said officials.
Speed and other vehicular metrics will be detected using a specialised piece of equipment. Over-speeding vehicles will be automatically reported to relevant authorities for action, they said.