Heavy traffic has led to long tailbacks on the Tangail highway, causing suffering for drivers and passengers.

An almost 17 km stretch on the Dhaka-Tangail-Bangabandhu Bridge highway from the east end of the bridge to Kalihati’s Rasulpur is congested, said Mir Md Sajedur, chief of the Elenga Highway Police Outpost.

There has been heavy traffic on the highway since dawn, Sajedur added.

As two lanes of traffic from Elenga to the eastern end of the bridge were moving slowly, many truck drivers parked by the side of the road and slept. This caused vehicles further away to also assume traffic was heavily congested.

However, there were few vehicles on the lane running from Elenga to Dhaka, he said.

Due to the congestion, vehicles headed to the north of the country and to Dhaka are attempting to go around the traffic from Elenga to Bhuiyanpur, Tarakandi and the eastern end of Bangabandhu Bridge using regional roads and the bridge roundabout.

“This road is occasionally very congested in the morning,” said Yakub Ali, a driver for Shyamoli Paribahan. “We have to suffer. But today [Wednesday] there is a surge in vehicles.”

Highway and district police are working to relieve the congestion and hope to ease the traffic as the day goes on, said Sajedur.