Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, now has an easier route to work after the first phase of a long-awaited metro system opened.
Car-clogged roads in one of the world’s most densely populated cities, where more than 20 million people live, enrage locals.
It was a matter of pride for Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to inaugurate the new railway on Wednesday.
Every train will have one carriage reserved for women, Ms. Hasina said.
Mariam Afiza, the first female train operator, described driving it as a dream come true.
A major development partner of Bangladesh, Japan, largely funded the construction of the first metro line, Line 6.
The service will initially run around 12km (8 miles) from Uttara to Agargaon without stopping at any stations.
Around 60,000 people will be transported per hour by the new metro line.
As a result of the six lines and more than 100 stations, traffic jams are expected to be eliminated in Dhaka, where traffic jams are estimated to cost $3 billion a year in lost work hours.
According to our correspondence, Mostafizur Rahman spends almost three hours on the bus every morning to get to work and is “counting on” the metro line to alleviate public suffering.
During the opening ceremony, Ms. Hasina commemorated the six Japanese engineers killed in a 2016 attack on a Dhaka café by Islamist extremists.
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