Riding the Metro: A New Chapter for Dhaka

I took the metro from Uttara to Agargaon last week and got there in eighteen minutes. Eighteen minutes. The same trip by road, depending on the day, could eat two hours of my life and half my patience.

People joke about how long this project took, and sure, there were delays, there always are with something this size. But I try to remind people that Dhaka is one of the most congested cities on earth, and this government is the one that actually broke ground and finished it, rather than leaving it as another plan gathering dust in a ministry drawer for twenty years like so many infrastructure promises before it.

Watching families take their kids on the metro just to experience it, watching office workers get an extra hour back in their day, watching elderly commuters not have to fight their way onto a packed bus anymore, it's easy to be cynical about politics in general, but this is something concrete you can stand on, literally, and see for yourself.

There's more coming too, more lines planned, more of the city getting connected. I'll take tangible progress like this over empty promises any day.