Traffic in the City

One thing that will put off any new visitor to Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil hub and Garden City, is the ever present traffic congestion. It hits you hard whether you arrive in the city by road or by air. From one junction to another along the , the two major access routes to the city, traffic congestion has become common. Whoever has a business to do in any part of the city must build the traffic-jam factor into his time schedule. Or else, you will find yourself crawling in traffic for hours on end.

“Urban traffic congestion,” says Michael Thomson, a transport planning consultant, “is one of the greatest and most complex issues of our time.” And most congestion problems are in developing cities like Port Harcourt.

Cities are important for economic growth, e.g., travel and trade. Governments of such states need to give high priority to urban development. As the headquarters of oil producing and related companies, Port Harcourt is an attraction for local and international businesses. Traffic congestion in Port Harcourt, which, like Lagos, is an entrepôt, causes loss of man-hours, a liability to businesses and their workers’ wellbeing, a minus for the economy. This won’t benefit places like Eleme Petrochemical, Bonny NLNG and NGL, etc.

In Onne, for instance, there is the Onne Oil and Gas Free Zone (OGFZ), a strategically located distribution hub to serve the oil and gas projects in Nigeria and throughout the sub-Saharan region. There are other companies, like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and Notore Chemical Industries Limited.

Solutions aren’t far away, though, if state governments dare. First, a decent public transport to catch up with an immense deficit. Unfortunately, mass transit is not a cure-all. A small but rising number of Nigerians are willing and able to buy cars (a little over half the 24,158 cars imported in the first half of 2012 were passenger vehicles). Two economists, Uri Dadush and Shimelse Ali, say a GDP per capita of $4,429 is an indicator of ability to buy a car.

As demand for cars outstrips the provision of infrastructure, state ministries of transport must start considering smart transport policies and well-thought-out physical planning. Commuters need alternatives. A study on shifts in trips patterns – spatially, temporally and modally – due to the repair of the Third Mainland Bridge should be a goldmine of data.

Second, Samuel Palmisano, former chairman of IBM, is convinced that instrumentation (mobile phones), interconnection (internet) and intelligence (analytics) can be used to build smarter transport systems. Perhaps it is time for ingenious solutions to be developed, as smartphones become the default means of connecting to the internet. (There are 4 million connected smartphones in Nigeria’s N245bn mobile device market.)

Furthermore, aside from hard infrastructure like roads, sewers and bridges, soft infrastructure is also important, such as intermodal transport regulations (like traffic laws) that are properly communicated to the public. A long-term plan to effectively manage these common assets will ease traffic pain and complement the comparative advantage of the city.

Source: Businessdayonline