Whether we are pedestrians, cyclists or drivers, roads play a crucial role in our everyday lives. But where and how should we build any new ones? What kind of roads do we need? And how did we end up with the ones we have? Rajan Datar talks about the past and present of roads and roadbuilding with anthropologist Traci Ardren from the University of Miami, civil engineer Kate Castle, historians Alexis DeGreiff from the National University of Colombia in Bogota and Aparajita Mukhopadhyay from Kent University, literary scholar Stephanie Ponsavady from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and journalist Karim Waheed from Dhaka. Plus World Service listeners from around the globe share their road-trip joys and frustrations. (Photo: Road construction, worker with a shovel. Credit: blyjak/Getty Images)
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Welcome to the Forum from the BBC World Service.
I'm Rajan Datta.
What you're listening to is the sound of traffic in Bangladesh.
Its capital, Dhaka is notorious for its road congestion and extremely long commuting times.
Local resident journalist Karim Wahid has long suffered what that means in practice.
So you're sitting in your car or a tuk tuk or a bus and you're pretty much stuck.
You're lucky if you're in a car and the air condition is working, the vehicle is probably moving, I don't know, a few inches every 10 minutes or 20 minutes.
I mean, it's maddening.
And your mood at that point, it's frustration.
You really don't know when you're going to reach your destination.
If you have an important meeting, you obviously have to leave home at least an hour or 90 minutes prior.
So, yeah, commuting in Dhaka on workday is absolutely difficult.