Traffic Solution/Mass Transport Restructuring should top the 6th Lagos Economic Summit agenda

The Lagos State Government (LASG) will host its 6th economic summit, an event that submits a pathway for development in new directions and also host speakers of value from other parts of the world to suggest to Lagos policies that worked there and how it can also work here.

 

The summit has been largely successful in the past, evident with adopted programs listed in past communiqués. The summit is necessary to position Lagos, the main commercial city of Nigeria, to contribute more towards Nigeria’s long term economic target.

 

Lagos is with a population nearing 20million, and is ailed by burgeoning growth that is quicker than accommodative developments. Lagos is clearly working in certain areas, but there are others that seem so complex. The mass transportation / traffic situation mix is a big challenge to the state and solutions directed at them are not enough.

 

Transportation is amongst topics up for discussion at the summit and will be laid again for solutions. Transportation in Lagos via road is a problem that needs a summit to itself. Traffic, rudderless mass transit operators, insufficient law enforcement officers and lack of adequate infrastructure makes road transportation in Lagos a mega challenge.

 

Joining all the elements of road transport in Lagos for solution may result to achieving nothing, but having each element studied and prepared for solution before deployment, will see transportation become more comfortable, and engagement-friendly than we have it.

 

Traffic will probably be the first and the best start, with solutions lined up and pursued to scale it down, before others like restructuring sitting arrangements in mass transits and queues are restored for people awaiting buses. Smart traffic technologies will help in traffic solutions, but enforcement in our situation requires that sites are manned to nab and correct offenders.

 

The Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) is the gateway to transportation and related issues in Lagos. Their experience, encounters and reports can give a face to restructuring transportation in Lagos. Restructuring LASTMA is the beginning, before LASTMA can effectively plunge traffic and restructure transportation in Lagos.

 

LASTMA is doing a good job and their contribution in seen in ease of traffic under different conditions. LASTMA’s good to the public in their service is usually contradicted by excesses of some officials who get in the news for bad reasons. Some of these and experience with road user show that certain things are lacking for those folks, with respect to regular trainings, bottom-up communication and welfare.

 

LASTMA needs to be catered for with some of the submission in the research draft titled Lagos: Short Term Traffic Solutions for the Long Term. Some of the submissions include a 12 months expansion and reorganization that will engender a new LASTMA that is born to handle evolving traffic in Lagos.

 

The LASG have the power for this, with a good start to come from its 6th  economic summit later this month. Presentations of this forte and more that present a way through will be needful, with solutions that are exactly applicable to the environment.

 

With a restructured LASTMA, and some more programs, traffic will slowly wind down across all routes in the state. After the projected traffic-reduction success, transportation can now be laid to be restructured. Mass transit buses will be required to carry a maximum number of sitters per row, as applicable to the kind of bus.

 

Mass transits buses and passenger-seeking cabs will also be required to always drive on the service lane, because of their fitful stops. Standings in big buses will be allowed if limited to a specified number, no matter the crowd at the park. Buses will be required to ‘look good’ to comfy passengers and kill the wretch looks it makes Lagos wear in some photography.

 

Due collectors for mass transit buses will also need to be organized in the way they collect their dues, and how to position themselves, because some of their assaults result in rashness of bus operators. There is also the need to have more traffic signs that will automatically instruct operators of dos and don’ts on routes across the state.

 

These suggestions and more are necessities if Lagos is thinking to reform road transportation. Infrastructure and enforcement will aid this, and bet is on LASTMA to power it. A smaller taskforce group within LASTMA can oversee this, but will need to be the new LASTMA.

 

Talking transportation at the summit without engaging some of the realities presented here may leave action to another future, because 2012 is one relative to the past and presents an opportunity to make some difference. Lagos can overcome its transport / traffic challenges, if willing.

 

By David Stephen he blogs at: www.trpns.com

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