Why 12 kilometres take 12 hours on the Dhaka-Sylhet Highway
Five years later, commuters are still paying the price for delays, inching along at a snail’s pace while counting potholes instead of kilometres. The 12-kilometre stretch from Ashuganj Roundabout to Sarail Highway Mor has become a byword for misery
In 2020, work began to upgrade the 51-kilometre stretch from Ashuganj to Akhaura into a four-lane highway, a vital artery for inter-district trade.
Five years later, commuters are still paying the price for delays, inching along at a snail's pace while counting potholes instead of kilometres. The 12-kilometre stretch from Ashuganj Roundabout to Sarail Highway Mor has become a byword for misery.
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Passenger Abdul Baten said, "I boarded a bus to Sylhet at 2am from Dhaka but didn't reach Sarail Highway Mor until 10:30am. No one addresses our misery."
"We left Dhaka at 11pm and didn't reach Sarail Highway Mor until 10am. Eight hours to cover 12 kilometres! This has been my life for months," said Mahmud Ali, a bus driver trapped overnight in traffic.
So the question looms: why does a 12-kilometre stretch take half a day to traverse, and what's behind the chaos choking this crucial highway?
When the highway took a vacation: 300 workers went home
The four-lane highway, a Tk5,791 crore project built by Efcon India, has been plagued by delays from the start. After the July uprising, over 300 officials and workers reportedly returned to India, halting construction for three months.
Currently, overall completion stands at just over 50%, meaning the highway is half-finished but fully frustrating.
Package 1, from Ashuganj Roundabout to Sarail Highway Mor, is the worst-hit segment. Work here is 62% complete, but lingering financial complications have stalled the remainder.
Project manager Mostakur Rahman Bhuiya said repairs are ongoing and assured that the extended deadline, now June 2027, would allow completion of all work. Commuters, however, remain sceptical after years of broken promises.
Package 2, from Sarail Highway Mor to Tantur Bazar, has reached 55% completion. Construction is carried out by closing one side of the highway while traffic squeezes through the other, creating daily bottlenecks.
Package 3, from Tantur Bazar to Akhaura Land Port, has yet to see any work begin, leaving the final stretch untouched.
Vehicles crawl here at a pace that would make pedestrians look like sprinters, sometimes taking four to six hours, and occasionally 10–12 hours when breakdowns block the narrow lanes.
Pothole: Where 12km takes half a day
Particularly due to potholes at Ashuganj Roundabout and Sarail Highway Mor, vehicles take 4–6 hours to traverse the roughly 12-kilometre stretch from Ashuganj Roundabout to Highway Mor.
The potholes not only slow traffic drastically but also frequently cause breakdowns. When a stalled vehicle is towed, congestion ripples both ahead and behind, sometimes stretching travel time for this short section to 10–12 hours.
And during the rainy season, the ordeal worsens, turning the highway into a mud-and-frustration obstacle course.
The misery has spilt over onto the Dhaka–Sylhet railway, where commuters hoping to escape the bottlenecks find little relief. Seats are far too few for the swelling passenger load, and many travellers, tickets in hand, are left standing, jostled by the crush of the crowd.
Gias Acharya, a university student, recounted his ordeal on the Upakul Express yesterday, "I bought a ticket from Noakhali to Dhaka after the Puja holidays," he said. "But after boarding, I couldn't even sit. Pushed and squeezed by the crowd, I had to stand in the train's toilet and finally got off at the Airport Railway Station."
Experts say the chaos is less about potholes or stalled construction and more about traffic mismanagement. Muhammad Fauzul Kabir Khan, Road Transport and Bridges Adviser, addresses the problem in a broader context.
With ever-increasing reliance on road transport and construction lagging far behind demand, the highway has become so congested that it threatens available space for other uses.
Reflecting on the scale of the problem, he wryly noted, "In my view, the main problem isn't the road itself. If the traffic keeps growing like this, there won't be space left for houses, factories, or even graves."
Meanwhile, commuters remain trapped in a perfect storm of potholes, unfinished construction, and sheer disorder, cursing what was meant to be the "shortcut to Sylhet," now a gruelling test of endurance.
