Let’s get rid of traffic congestion

To combat the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, governments worldwide have been forced to implement various lockdown measures.

Consequently, this has encouraged or forced many people to work from home and resulted in largely empty streets and highways.

Almost overnight we have had to adjust our daily routines which include commute to work, the school run, plus the occasional shopping trip and several others besides. These routines often lead to traffic congestion and the associated air pollution.

Typical one-way travel times during the rush hour in Kampala have ranged between 45 minutes to 120 minutes. This is due to ever increasing congestion. The elimination of congestion would reduce such travel times to between 20 and 40 minutes.

Studies have shown that populations in several African cities are likely to double in the next 20 years — with a corresponding increase in traffic.

Companies, especially in the private sector, seem to have stepped up to the remote working challenge with most switching their operations to virtual platforms. Virtual meetings are now held on platforms such as Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, GoTo and many others. This has freed up the transport infrastructure capacity.

The post-pandemic conditions, however, will largely revert to the good old days.
It is my prayer that we try to retain the freed-up road capacity given that many of us have shown that we can work remotely.

Studies show that between 40 per and 80 per cent of urban trips are work-related, thus any reduction in this trip purpose frees up much needed road capacity.
One possible way to reduce the trips is to ensure certain sectors continue working remotely.
For example, not all industries need offices to operate. So do architectural firms, engineering design firms, consultancies, audit firms, and many others including some government entities.

These could continue working remotely. Ideally, this would be in their homes which would cut out any trip or alternatively an office setting near one’s residence. I do not see why someone in Mukono or Nsangi would need to drive all the way into Kampala’s central business district for a meeting in post Covid-19.

Given the stress on our urban transport infrastructure, I would call on the government to institute policies that encourage distributed and remote work practices.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that we have enough ICT infrastructure to support a section of our work force working remotely. We just need to ramp this up. Incentives such as reduced taxes pegged to the proportion of staff working remotely would go a long way in encouraging such a culture.

Questions on how to track employees working from home could be addressed through intelligent software just like the movement-tracking applications in Asian countries were deployed to contain the pandemic.

I envisage that several talented software developers in Kampala could develop similar world class applications. There would be some benefit for the real estate market as well because most people would then need an extra room or two for the home office.
That is a cost that could be shared with the employer.

There are also work–life balance benefits to accrued to all because commutes would be shorter or non-existent. Individuals would then have more time for activities other than work such as personal interests, family and social or leisure activities.

This is an opportunity worth pursuing especially for a government that is already ahead of the curve in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. We should come out of this situation stronger and better, at least in some respects.

Mr Rugarama is an international traffic congestion simulation expert.