The nightmarish traffic jams that the 22 million residents of the mega city of Lagos have to navigate, costs the city some N42 billion ($116 million) per annum in economic losses, according to estimates by city officials.
The costs in terms of mental health, sanity, noise and environmental pollution is sadly much higher.
Everyday more than 8 million people, moving in 5 million vehicles traverse a patchwork of just 9,100 roads. As a result, Lagosians end up spending an average of 30 hours in traffic each week — or 1,560 annually — while drivers in Los Angeles and Moscow traffic spend only 128 and 210 hours respectively per year.
It has the dubious ranking of being the 3rd most stressful city in the world (2017), just behind Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq.
The blame for this horror show is certainly enough to go round, from a Federal Government that looks increasingly inept and unable to tackle the crises and Gridlock in roads leading to and from the Apapa and TinCan Ports to the inability of previous state Governments to complete at least one major rail line that would have eased the number of vehicles on the overwhelmed roads.
Compare this state of total irresponsibility to progress being made in megacities in faraway places like Jakarta, Indonesia or even cities closer to home like Abidjan.
Jakarta opened its first Mass Rapid Transit rail line last year.
The project, first mooted in the 1980s (just like Lagos’ stillborn metro system truncated by a military government headed by the current President), finally got off the ground in 2013 after President Joko Widodo, then Jakarta governor, secured funding and approval.
The first phase, built at a cost of $1.2 billion, will connect 13 stations along 16 kilometres of line from the south of the city to the business district. It is expected to move 170,000 passengers a day for 10,000 rupiah (71 cents) or less per trip.
In the next phase, Indonesia plans to spend about $40 billion to extend Jakarta’s metro network seeking to add an additional six lines and building 230 kilometres by 2030, from only about16 kilometres today.
Meanwhile in neighboring Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, the Government in October, signed a $1.5 billion agreement with a unit of Bouygues SA for an urban railway known as Metro d’Abidjan to ease congestion.
The 37-kilometer railway project is expected to carry 530,000 passengers daily, once complete.
Lagos is the largest city in the world without a functioning rail system, and has been trying to construct one since the 1980s without success.
After being conceived by then Governor of Lagos state, Lateef Jakande, in 1983, the initial Metroline project was scrapped in 1985 by Muhammadu Buhari, at a loss of over $78 million to the Lagos tax payers.
In 2007 the Lagos light rail project was resurrected by the then Governor Babatunde Fashola, after the government developed a transportation master plan that will integrate road, water, rail, and cable-car transportation to provide one of the most efficient systems of transportation in the megacity.
Seven train lines were planned to link all parts of the states: Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Purple, Brown and Orange , and the contract for the Blue Line (the 27-kilometre Badagry line running from Okokomaiko to Marina via Iddo) was awarded at a cost of $1.2 billion or about N190 billion (at the market exchange rates of the time).
The Blue Line was supposed to be fully ready in 2012 but eight years after the supposed start date, construction is not yet complete.
In August 2018, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority or LAMATA signed an agreement with French manufacturer of rail transport equipment, Alstom SA to conduct a review of the rail lines. After the review of the rail project, the state government said the Blue Line, would now be ready for passenger operation by 2022.
It is clear from the above that with the devaluation of the naira since 2007, and movement in the Dollar/Naira, Foreign Exchange (FX) rate since then, the project estimates are probably no longer feasible.
The miserable traffic in Lagos is partly as a result of the city’s overwhelming importance in the nation’s economy. The metropolitan area generates almost a fifth of Nigeria’s annual gross domestic product (GDP).
This is why the Federal Government must intervene in helping the state build out its transport infrastructure just as is being done by the national governments in Jakarta, Abidjan or Addis-Ababa.
A functioning rail-line built by the Federal Government in the middle of the country (the Abuja – Kaduna, light rail), is estimated to have led to improved trade and linkages between the two cities.
Financing something similar that improves transportation links within Lagos, would have led to an impact probably 10-times greater for the Nigerian economy. In that regards, the recent $22.7 billion loan request by the Federal Government was disappointing as the transportation projects had outlays for an Abuja Mass Rail 2, expected to cost $1.25 billion, but had zero funding plans for any rail project in the largest city and sub-national economy in the country!
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