How bicycles help reduce traffic jams on short trips

Anyone who has sat in Dhaka traffic knows the feeling of a short trip turning into a long one. One reason is simple arithmetic: a lot of road space is used to move very few people over very short distances.

The cost of congestion

A 2017 analysis in The Financial Express put the cost of Dhaka’s traffic congestion at roughly 3.8 billion US dollars a year, in lost time, fuel and productivity. Every hour a bus, ambulance or delivery van spends stuck is an hour someone does not get back.

Who is using the road space?

Reports on Dhaka’s streets note that rickshaws, buses and walking carry most people, and that private cars are only a small share of trips, around five percent in one account, yet take up more than half of the road space at peak hours. The World Bank figure often quoted is that Dhaka’s 1.5 million rickshaw pullers serve about one million passengers daily. The point is not to blame any one group. It is that road space is limited, and the vehicles that use the most of it per person make congestion worse for everyone else.

Why a bicycle works for short distances

• It takes a small fraction of the road and parking space of a car.
• It can often keep moving through slow traffic where a car queues.
• There is no time lost searching for parking.
• There is no fuel to buy, and almost no running costs.
• Door to door, it is often as fast as a car in congested city centres over a few kilometres.

The “one trip a day” idea

You do not have to give up your car, motorbike or bus to make a difference. Research led by Dr Christian Brand at the University of Oxford followed around 4,000 people in seven European cities for two years. It found that swapping just one trip a day from driving to cycling, for 200 days a year, would save about half a tonne of carbon dioxide. The same logic applies to congestion: a few fewer vehicles on a road can change how well traffic flows.

What happens when more people ride

Fewer cars on the same road means smoother flow for buses and emergency vehicles too. Cities that make cycling safe see more people choose it, and more riders on the road make drivers more aware of them. Safety and numbers grow together.

Make the switch, step by step

1. List your regular trips under five kilometres: school, market, tuition, a friend’s house.
2. Choose one, such as the market run, and try it by bicycle this week.
3. Plan a quiet route in advance. Side streets are often better than the main road.
4. Carry what you need in a basket or bag on the bicycle, not on your back.
5. Add a second trip next week, and ask a friend to join you.