Homebound again: People rush to leave Dhaka before Eid

People headed home for Eid are filling up trains, buses and launches for a way out of Dhaka.

Huge crowds descended on Kamalapur Railway Station on Friday, said station manager Sitangshu Chakraborty. "Fourteen trains left the station until 9am. Most of them were more than full."

The three train terminals in the capital were also buzzing with travellers on the weekend before Eid-ul-Fitr, the festival to mark the end of Ramadan.

Official Eid holiday was from next Sunday to Tuesday. But people began leaving the capital city for towns and villages as early as Thursday, the day before a two-day weekend.

Traffic jam has cleared on the Meghna Bridge on Dhaka-Chittagong Highway after massive congestions exhausted travellers on Thursday night, according to transport officials.

Buses to Comilla, Chittagong, Noakhali and Sylhet were keeping schedule at Sayedabad Bus Terminal.

The Mawa highway is free of congestion, said Sayedabad terminal staff responsible for routes to Barisal and Khulna.

Travellers heading north complained mostly about slow traffic on Tangail highway. The scenario is said to be the same for buses bound for Mymensingh from Mohakhali terminal.

The launch terminal at Sadarghat was expecting huge crowds at noon when the launches are scheduled to start their journey to the south.

Meanwhile, a 13-kilometre long traffic jam at Munshiganj's Gazaria on the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway is starting to loosen up. 
 
It started after a truck broke down on the Meghna Bridge, said Gazaria Police Station OC Md Hedayet Islam Bhuiyan. 
 
The bridge on the four-lane highway has two lanes. The traffic situation improved because goods-laden lorries and trucks headed to Dhaka were diverted or stopped on the highway, police say. 
    
But more than 700 vehicles were waiting to cross the Padma River from Shimulia river port, a gateway to southern districts.
 
But there were 18 ferries operating from the river port and most of the vehicles waiting on the banks were private cars so the situation is likely to improve soon, said assistant Shah Khaled Newaz, assistant general manager for Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Corporation (BIWTC) at Shimulia.

At Aricha, more than a thousand cars and 30 buses had lined up to make the ferry crossing, said BIWTC's Zillur Rahman. More buses will arrive at the river port after noon, he said.