Rethinking Chattogram's urban development: Beyond megaprojects and mismanagement

Chattogram is once again dreaming big. The proposed 54-kilometre monorail, with an estimated price tag of Tk20,000–25,000 crore, is being promoted as a breakthrough for a city choking on congestion. A foreign-funded joint venture, a four-year construction promise, and a one-year feasibility study now dominate the conversation.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: Chattogram does not suffer from a shortage of megaprojects. It suffers from weak planning, poorer management, and institutions that have been sidelined for decades.

Unless that changes, the monorail risks becoming another expensive structure added to a city that still struggles with basic urban functionality.

A city built without planners

The core problem is not technology. It is governance.

Since the 1995 Master Plan, Chattogram's planners have repeatedly flagged the need for institutional reform. That plan clearly identified four pillars: transport, drainage, land use planning, and urban structure. Institutional empowerment was supposed to hold these pillars together. It never happened.

Instead, decision-making gradually shifted away from professionals. Today, many major urban projects are conceptualised and approved by ministers and senior bureaucrats, not by planners, transport engineers, or urban economists. The Chattogram Development Authority remains underpowered, under-resourced, and often bypassed.

The result is infrastructure without integration.

Flyovers appear without feeder roads. Junctions are widened without traffic management. The Karnaphuly Tunnel, one of the most expensive urban projects in the country, reportedly loses around Tk30 lakh every day, not because tunnels are inherently bad, but because connectivity, demand forecasting, and network planning were weak.

This is not an engineering failure. It is a planning failure.

When management matters more than concrete

One point repeatedly raised by transport experts is quietly ignored in policy discussions: Chattogram's traffic problem is not primarily a capacity problem.

Studies suggest that up to 70–80% of congestion could be reduced through better traffic management using existing roads. Lane discipline, signal coordination, bus route rationalisation, parking enforcement, and pedestrian management deliver faster gains than flyovers or rail systems.

Yet management does not offer ribbon-cutting opportunities. Concrete does.

So the city builds vertically while ignoring the systems needed to make roads work. A monorail in such an environment does not fix congestion. It floats above a dysfunctional network.

The economics do not add up, yet

Urban rail systems work when demand justifies them. According to assessments from engineering institutions, for a monorail or metro system to be economically viable, major junctions need traffic volumes of around 100,000 vehicles per day.

Chattogram is not there yet. Projections suggest that level of demand may emerge only after 2030, assuming steady growth and proper feeder systems.

Building a monorail before that point creates a mismatch between cost and usage. High capital expenditure, low ridership, and long-term subsidies become inevitable.

The opportunity cost is even more striking. Tk25,000 crore could fully develop road networks in 20 to 25 upazilas. Each complete upazila road network costs roughly Tk1,040 crore. That investment would directly connect farms, markets, and towns to regional hubs, reducing pressure on Chattogram instead of concentrating it further.

This is not an argument against urban rail forever. It is an argument for timing and priorities.

Centralising the city while ignoring its hinterland

Chattogram's congestion is not just a city problem. It is a regional problem.

Every day, thousands enter the city because surrounding towns and rural areas lack jobs, services, and connectivity. People are not attracted to congestion. They are pushed into it.

Instead of addressing this imbalance, megaprojects reinforce it. They make the city more expensive while doing little to strengthen growth centres outside it.

Upgrading district rail lines for commuter services, improving feeder roads, and developing logistics hubs outside the city would allow people and goods to move efficiently without flooding the urban core. Farmers could access markets. Workers could commute affordably. The city could breathe.

This kind of decentralised development is less glamorous than a monorail, but far more transformative.

Cost inflation and the culture of mismanagement

Another uncomfortable issue hangs over Chattogram's megaprojects: cost escalation.

Multiple sources point to a pattern where initial project estimates are modest, only to balloon later through design changes, variation orders, and non-tendered additions. Projects that could be completed for Tk1,000 crore somehow end up costing Tk4,000 crore.

This is often justified as "unavoidable complexity." In reality, it reflects weak oversight and a system where inflated costs benefit a small circle of contractors and officials.

Some critics describe this as intellectual corruption. The paperwork looks clean. The logic sounds technical. But the public pays far more than necessary.

Without transparency and professional accountability, any new megaproject, monorail included, carries the same risk.

Foreign expertise: necessary, but not dominant

Bangladesh does need foreign technology. No serious planner disputes that. What is disputed is the habit of outsourcing not just equipment, but management and operations.

Projects like the Single Point Mooring, port terminals, and proposed rail systems increasingly rely on foreign operators. This creates long-term dependency and weakens local capacity.

The irony is that Bangladesh already has skilled engineers, planners, and operators. What it lacks is a system that values them, pays them competitively, and gives them authority.

When management remains foreign, accountability becomes blurry. When things go wrong, responsibility travels overseas. Sustainable infrastructure requires local ownership of knowledge and decision-making.

Foreign machines can be imported. Local capacity must be built.

Sustainable development is boring, but it works

Sustainable development is often misunderstood as an abstract global concept. In reality, it is painfully practical.

It means solving today's problems without creating bigger ones tomorrow. It means not building flyovers that later require expensive ramps because no one planned pedestrian movement. It means not locking the city into high operating costs before demand exists.

Most importantly, it means putting the right people in the right jobs.

Empowering the CDA and other planning bodies is not optional. It is foundational. Professional planners must lead planning, not react to political announcements.

Transport policy must prioritise management before construction. Rural and regional connectivity must be treated as urban policy, not as a separate issue. And public spending must be transparent enough that citizens can see what they are paying for, and why.

The real question Chattogram must answer

The debate is not about whether Chattogram deserves modern infrastructure. It does.

The real question is this: who is the city being built for?

If development serves a narrow group, consumes vast resources, and ignores everyday dysfunction, public frustration will deepen. If it serves mobility, productivity, and regional balance, the city can still change course.

A monorail may one day make sense. But without institutional reform, better management, and a shift in priorities, it risks becoming another symbol of ambition detached from reality.

Chattogram does not need bigger ideas. It needs better ones.

Subhash Barua is a Transport Engineering Expert and the Vice President of Forum for Planned Chattogram.