The Dhaka-Sylhet Highway, one of Bangladesh’s busiest and most vital transport routes, has become a corridor of misery.
Once a relatively smooth five-hour journey, the route can now take as long as twenty-four hours to traverse, paralysing trade and testing the endurance of everyone who travels it.
The Brahmanbaria section, stretching from Ashuganj to Sarail, has become a bottleneck of national proportions where long tailbacks, crumbling asphalt, and rainwater-filled craters have turned daily travel into an ordeal.
The situation has reached such an extent that industrial production, domestic commerce, and export logistics are being severely disrupted. Trucks carrying goods from Dhaka or Chattogram are often stranded for hours on end, while raw materials destined for factories in Habiganj and other industrial zones are arriving late or spoiling on the road.
The once-thriving flow of trade along the highway has been replaced by queues of motionless lorries, smoke-belching engines, and drivers waiting helplessly in scorching heat or heavy rain.
The damage to vehicles has become routine. Buses and trucks regularly break down as they hit large potholes that stretch across entire lanes. During rainfall, the situation worsens when water fills these holes, turning them into hidden traps that slow traffic even further. The conditions have also caused repeated accidents, leaving many vehicles stranded and worsening congestion.
The roots of the crisis lie in the long-delayed four-lane expansion project of the highway. In 2015, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council approved a Tk 5,791 crore project to widen the 50.58-kilometre stretch from Ashuganj River Port to Akhaura Land Port via the Sarail Bishwa Road Interchange. The Indian construction firm AFCONS Infrastructure Limited was awarded the contract and began work in 2017.
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