Dhaka Airport Railway Station is one of the busiest railway stations in the country, serving thousands of passengers every day. Yet, inadequate facilities, overcrowded platforms, poor sanitation and insufficient seating have turned travelling through this important transport hub into a distressing experience. With passenger numbers continuing to rise, upgrading the station’s infrastructure and services is now an urgent necessity.
Dhaka Airport Railway Station, once a small station for local trains, has gradually become an important stop for almost all trains passing through the area. According to station employees, at least 60,000 people use it daily. Delayed trains regularly leave platforms packed with waiting passengers, creating dangerous congestion. The limited number of benches, broken seats, and inadequate fans make waiting mostly uncomfortable in hot weather. Many passengers are forced to sit on the floor, while overcrowding often makes boarding trains difficult.
A similar story emerges about the condition of the station’s waiting rooms and toilets. The two first class waiting rooms can only serve up to 52 people, forcing many passengers, including women and children, to sit on the floor. Poor sanitation and foul smells make the toilets difficult to use. Although a modern public toilet has been established beneath the nearby footbridge, maintaining cleanliness and improving the facilities inside the platforms remain major challenges. Meanwhile, the VIP room often remains largely unused, highlighting the need to prioritise facilities that benefit ordinary passengers.
Access to the station presents further difficulties. Traffic congestion and complications involving road access and parking near Terminal 2 make reaching the station by private car or ride-sharing services difficult. The pedestrian footbridges between platforms are only accessible by stairs, making it hard for passengers with large pieces of baggage to move between platforms. Delayed trains and overcrowding sometimes push desperate passengers towards unsafe boarding practices, including travelling on train roofs, putting their lives at risk.
The requirements of women, children, the elderly and those with medical conditions or disabilities must be prioritised. Seating, waiting rooms, passageways, and toilets must all be integrated into the network, maintained, and available to all as a public service. Anyone waiting for an hour or more should be able to sit in comfort in a safe, clean place.
A project of Bangladesh Railway with the World Bank to upgrade Dhaka Airport Railway Station and Kamalapur to a multimodal transport hub is already in the pipeline. But this should not be another way to avoid the necessity of a rapid improvement of the existing railway stations. Railway authorities should urgently expand passenger waiting areas, increase seating, repair broken benches, improve sanitation, ensure regular cleaning, strengthen crowd management and make platform transfers safer. Train schedules must also be managed more efficiently to reduce unnecessary congestion.
We believe Dhaka Airport Railway Station’s growing importance demands a corresponding expansion of its capacity and passenger services. The government and railway authorities must act without delay to transform this overcrowded station into a safe, accessible and passenger-friendly transport hub, which will ease the public’s suffering and will instill confidence in the railway system of the country.
