Lagos Blue Line has recorded 500,000 passenger traffic within five months of operations, according to the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA).
Osa Konyeha, technical adviser, Corporate Investment Planning of LAMATA, disclosed this while making a keynote presentation on Mega-Lagos Challenges in Urban Transport and Focus on the Sustainability and Circularity towards Renewable Energies using Waste, during a Sustainable Urban Transport summit by Sweden held in Lagos recently.
The implementation of Lagos Blue Line is currently in the initial phase that covers Marina to Mile 2 with five strategic stations including Marina, National Theatre Iganmu, Orile, Alaba and Mile 2.
He said the Blue Line, which aims to alleviate the notorious traffic gridlocks in the State, was initially projected to carry up to 500,000 passengers in year, which it has reached in 5 months, adding that the achievement has shown the significance of the rail project.
Konyeha said the State is also concluding the 37km Red Line from Agbado in Ogun State to Marina in Lagos and the first phase starts from Oyinbo to Agbado and is projected to carry 800,000 passengers in a year. He added that the Red Line billed to commence operations in the first quarter of this year.
He said Lagos is perfecting plans to build Green and Purple rail lines and that the detailed feasibility study for the project has been completed.
Pointing out that the state is seriously investing in the deployment of high-capacity buses that operate on CNG and electric energy, Konyeha said the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system operates on multi-fueled public transport systems to reduce the reliance on petrol.
According to him, Lagos has about 1,000 high-capacity buses and has recently introduced 11 CNG buses.
He said the CNG buses have carried over 527,000 passengers and plans are underway to inject 1,000 CNG buses, adding that the few number of e-buses that operate under the BRT platform has carried about 70,000 passengers.
To enable the effective operations of BRT buses, he said, the state built three BRT routes that include Ikorodu; Oshodi-Abule Egba and Badagry Expressway.
He further disclosed that the State introduced a single payment system for rail lines and the BRT and has successfully deployed about 4 million Cowry cards.
In the area of waste management, Konyeha said Lagos is engaging the private sector on the possible implementation of waste-to-energy plans and will soon begin the promotion of a two-bin system to segregate the waste from the source.
According to him, the current system where the scavengers are allowed to segregate the waste at the dumpsites is not helping and will not align with the proposed waste-to-energy plans.
“Swefund is currently funding the study on alternative fuel, which will be completed in about 10 months,” he said.
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