City transport chaos needs bold overhaul

Old Taxi Park is being revamped. In three months, it will look modern – new, well-sectioned and asphaltpaved, with passenger shades, lighting, and free of
mud-up-to-ankle whenever it rains. Quite the thing that should give Kampala an expressive look and make walkabout downtown to catch a taxi an experience to savour.
However, taxi operations in Kampala have been more than just that.

The disorganisation and congestion that come with taxis and boda boda operations have nothing to do with a modern taxi park or proper drainage. Ours have been like the Covid-19 pandemic. And, like the dreaded respiratory disease, the mess that have been taxis and boda boda rides in Kampala simply have had no cure.
But there are ways to get around them. Isolation would not work, neither would quarantine, the two effective ways to handle the Covid-19. But there are other ways to go about these things and fixing the Old Park will just be like throwing a new suit on an effigy – it never becomes a person.

The authorities have got to make a person, a life of Kampala. It is has been stuffy and congested long enough for those responsible for handling affairs of the city to only think of small vision such as fixing potholes and drainage
and splashing paint while doodling here and there.
What Kampala’s transport system needs is a bold and decisive overhaul.
Like the lockdown being lifted in phases, the overhaul can be executed in a similar way. With taxis and boda boda out of the city presently, there should be efforts to account for how many they actually are.

Does anyone know how many boda boda ply the city roads on a free Kampala? How about taxis? Can the city centre and the central business district do without some of them?
Even taxi and boda boda operators themselves would admit without hesitation that they are too many on the road; they must survive in the increasingly stifling economy. But everyone else wants to survive, too, and nobody would wish to spend two hours on the road because of traffic congestion when, ideally, they would have commuted in 30 minutes.

While government gains from taxes from fuel companies as traffic congestion leads to more fuel consumption, the economy loses more to technocrats spending too much time on the road than at work or home resting.
Kampala’s transport system needs a bold overhaul. We can keep the taxis and boda boda, but how many of them matters. How long until the buses are considered?