Why Is Dhaka-Ashulia Expressway So Expensive?

Every morning before entering my classroom, I look up at the concrete pillars that now dominate the skyline. From the windows of the university where I teach, I can watch the Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Motorway stretching towards Ashulia like an unfulfilled promise. Over the past few years, this landscape has transformed before my own eyes. Open fields gave way to construction yards, cranes replaced trees, and a new skyline gradually emerged above one of Bangladesh’s busiest industrial corridors. Like many, I assumed that such an enormous project must represent the country’s march towards world-class infrastructure.
Then, I opened the pages of a national daily. The headline was startling. The Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Motorway is now among the world’s most expensive elevated motorways in terms of construction cost per kilometre, yet experts argue that its infrastructure facilities fall short of international standards. Suddenly, the motorway I had watched growing outside my classroom no longer looked like just concrete and steel. It became a question. Not about whether Bangladesh should build mega infrastructure. We absolutely should. The question is whether we are buying excellence or merely paying premium prices.
It has become increasingly comfortable speaking the language of mega projects in our country. Bridges, tunnels, metro rail, motorways and airports are now symbols of national ambition. Politicians celebrate them. Citizens proudly photograph them. Economists count them as indicators of growth. There is nothing inherently wrong with this enthusiasm. No country has developed without investing heavily in infrastructure.
The problem begins when infrastructure becomes a competition of spending rather than a competition of quality. Around the world, expensive infrastructure often reflects extraordinary engineering challenges. China’s Yibin-Panzhihua Expressway costs nearly Tk 365 crore per kilometre because almost ninety percent of the 427-kilometre highway consists of elevated sections, bridges and tunnels passing through some of the country's most difficult mountainous terrain. Nature itself is the project's greatest obstacle.
Malaysia’s DASH Motorway costs far more than conventional highways because it incorporates sophisticated traffic management, solar energy systems, rainwater conservation, modern noise barriers and advanced toll technology. India invested heavily in the Dwarka Motorway partly because it includes one of the country’s widest urban tunnels and direct airport connectivity.
In each case, higher expenditure purchased additional engineering value. The Dhaka-Ashulia Elevated Motorway tells a different story. Its construction cost has climbed to around Tk 1,127 crore per kilometre. That figure places it significantly above comparable elevated motorways across Asia. Yet the project is not traversing the Himalayas, drilling through massive mountain ranges or incorporating revolutionary engineering technologies that fundamentally redefine urban transport. Its facilities, according to infrastructure experts, remain largely conventional.
This raises a difficult but necessary question. What exactly are we paying for? The answer provided by officials is not entirely unreasonable. Exchange rate fluctuations increased import costs. Taxes and customs duties rose. Additional utility relocation became necessary. The design changed to accommodate airport connectivity, railway requirements, metro rail integration and navigation demands. New components were added during implementation. Inflation also played its role.
None of these explanations should be dismissed outright. But collectively they reveal something deeper than rising prices. They reveal the enormous cost of inadequate planning. When a project's estimated cost rises from around Tk 16,900 crore to nearly Tk 27,500 crore without its core objective fundamentally changing, the conversation should move beyond accounting. It becomes a discussion about governance.
Infrastructure is not only built with concrete. It is also built with preparation. Every utility line that suddenly appears after construction begins, every redesign that becomes necessary halfway through implementation, every newly discovered engineering requirement, every last-minute acquisition problem points towards decisions that ideally should have been resolved long before the first pile entered the ground.
International projects often incorporate environmental resilience, future expansion, sustainability and climate adaptation from the very beginning. Those investments make projects more expensive, but they also make them more valuable over several decades. In Bangladesh, infrastructure planning often reflects immediate necessity rather than future possibility. Consider the Dhaka Metro Rail. Experts have repeatedly argued that future expansion should have been integrated more comprehensively into its original planning. Similar concerns now surround several transport projects where today's solutions may become tomorrow's bottlenecks. 
Infrastructure should not merely solve today’s traffic problem. It is necessary to anticipate tomorrow’s city. Perhaps the most overlooked issue is financial viability. A motorway is not simply a public service. It is also an economic investment whose long-term sustainability depends upon traffic demand, maintenance costs, operating expenses and revenue generation. When project costs rise by more than Tk 10,000 crore, the financial assumptions underpinning the original feasibility study inevitably change. 
The authorities approve these projects but often remain indifferent to evaluating them after the completion. Once a ribbon is cut, public discussion usually ends. Yet mature governance begins where inauguration ceremonies conclude. Thus, developing countries often repeat mistakes because they institutionalise celebration. Whereas, developed countries improve because they institutionalise learning. 
But, Bangladesh must stop repeating these mistakes. Post-project evaluation should become mandatory for every major public investment exceeding a certain financial threshold. Such evaluations should examine not merely whether construction was finished on time but whether projected benefits were actually achieved, whether financial assumptions proved accurate, whether design choices delivered expected outcomes and what lessons future project managers should learn. And Bangladesh needs comparative studies identifying exactly where costs escalate and why. This recommendation should become national policy.
In fact, infrastructure decisions are moral decisions as much as engineering ones. The real benchmark is not whether the country can afford expensive projects. It is whether expensive projects deliver expensive-quality outcomes.
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The writer is an academic, 
journalist and political analyst. 
He currently teaches at IUBAT. 
Email: [email protected]