By Mutabazi Sam Stewart
Many cities in Africa face the problem of over crowding but Kampala’s traffic jam is undoubtedly getting out of hand. The situation is likely to get even worse because our planners and engineers are either sleeping or they think that the problem will solve itself in the long run. The most crowded city in terms of vehicles and human traffic in Africa is Lagos, the former capital city of Nigeria, with a vehicle population of over three million. Lagos is however more than ten times the size of Kampala.
In 1992 Uganda had 120,000 vehicles. In 2004, the number of registered vehicles had jumped to 465,574. By the end of last year the total number of registered vehicles was almost reaching 600,000. Of these 80% are based in Kampala and the surrounding areas. In March 2006, a total of 2,555 vehicles were registered, the highest that year. The average vehicles being licensed currently is about 2,300 every month and 100 every day. The reason why we have a lot of traffic jams is not because we have too many vehicles but because our roads are very narrow. They are like village foot paths. Where as importation of cars continue to rise, our roads almost remain unchanged. This is in addition to the fact that the roads are full of potholes.
Construction of new buildings without parking within the city centre continues unabated. Kampala’s Central Business District (CBD) which is about one Kilometer in radius, hosts up to 50,000 cars on a busy day. All these have to compete for parking space, human traffic, roadside traders, together with their merchandise, garbage and offloading trailers. Kampala has the narrowest roads you can find. One can ague that they were constructed a long time ago when cars were few. But even the new roads being constructed nowadays are not any different in size. The much hyped northern bypass, Wakaliga and Ggaba roads are so narrow, one may wonder what was going on in the mind of those who constructed them.
All the roads which bring in and take out traffic from the city are small that if, God forbid, Kampala caught fire, many of us would die in the inferno because we would all be fighting to get out using the available narrow roads. During morning and evening hours, all the roads that lead into and out of the suburbs have jams. Ntinda, Nakulabye, Gayaza, Bwaise, Nateete, Kabalagala, Makindye, Nakawa, Bugolobi, Namuwongo are all annoyingly jammed. Gone are the days when most people would shun to reside along Entebbe road because of the incessant traffic jams. Today, every area around the city has its fair share of traffic jams.
It takes an average of thirty minutes for one to get out of Kampala through all the major routes such as Bombo road, Masaka road, Ggaba road, Entebbe road and Jinja road. Perhaps the clearest show of incompetence and negligence on the part of our planners can be witnessed on two of our most important roads – Jinja and Entebbe roads. Because of their proximity to Kampala, in addition to being host to important installations namely power generation and an international airport, Jinja and Entebbe respectively experience a lot of traffic along their highways. The roads leading to these two towns are narrow as well. One would expect the two roads to have multiple lanes of up to six cars heading in each direction. Currently both roads have only one lane. No wonder there are too many accidents reported on both roads.
On Entebbe road, at the new Airport Road Hotel (Bwebajja), the proprietor has been allowed to construct a structure right next to the road. The same has happened on Jinja road where all the trading centres namely, Kireka, Bweyogerere, Seeta, Mukono etc are all built within the reserve of the highway. In the not so distant future, there will be traffic jam from Kampala up to Jinja and vice versa as the two towns continue to expand towards one another. The same will happen along the route of Entebbe.
One of the greatest achievements the Mayor of Kampala Al Hajji Nasser Ntege Ssebagala would have recorded during his term of office was if he had successfully relocated upcountry buses from accessing the city centre. Sebaggala’s idea of establishing bus terminals in the outskirts of the city where they could pick and drop passengers going and coming from upcountry was the best thing that was going to happen to Kampala in a very long time. He was however blocked by myopic and greedy politicians who were more interested in cashing in from their businesses in the short term. The politicians agued that Kikubo market which is the business hub of fast moving merchandise would collapse and that passengers would be inconvenienced in moving long distances to where the buses were to be relocated. How shallow their thinking was! The consequence of this has been a heightened human and motor vehicle traffic jams and almost total collapse of traffic movement around Baganda Bus Park and Nakivubo area. Passing through this area on any day, whether driving a personal car or walking tests one’s patience to the limit.
If the hotel which was to be constructed at former Shimon premises, together with Hilton hotel at former UBC premises had materialized, we would have had up to ten hotels within the vicinity of less than a kilometer from each other. The other hotels around this area are: Sheraton, Serena, Golf Course hotel at Garden City, Grand Imperial, Imperial Royal, Speke Hotel, Hotel Africana and a new hotel under construction near Centenary Park. I do not know why investors can not realize that most people prefer hotels which are far off from the hustle and bustle of the city. They prefer areas which are in a quiet setting. Common Wealth Resort (formerly Speke Resort) Munyonyo reaps big for hosting many international visitors because it is a distance away from the city centre. It seems Ugandans generally like squeezed places.
The problem of traffic jams require rapid expansion of transport infrastructure and radical thinking to meet the challenges at hand. Traditional thinking of constructing one lane carriage within the vicinity of the city need to be re-examined and new directions established to provide effective and sustainable transport system for current and future generations.
The writer is a Human Rights Activist
Contact mutasamste@yahoo.com
Tel: 0772-882547
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