Flyovers are good but what we really need on our roads is commonsense

Government this week flagged off construction of a new flyover to decongest part of downtown Kampala. The Japanese, who are financing and will build the flyover, go about their business in a quiet, no-frills manner: one day they were bowing slightly forward to show their plans, the next day, a suspension bridge is towering over the River Nile.
In fact, the clever money is on the Japanese finishing the flyover project before the 21-kilometre Northern Bypass, which has been under construction since 2004.

Kampala badly needs to be decongested. People who commute into the city from Mukono Town, only 21 kilometres away, spend on average three hours a day on the road. It takes them, on average, eight minutes per kilometre and they waste one month of their lives every year sitting in traffic!
While news of a new flyover is interesting, research shows building or expanding roads does not necessarily reduce congestion. In fact, in most cases, fulfilling demand for more roads is positively correlated with the supply of more cars.
So while the flyovers are nice to have, we need a lot more imagination and commonsense to decongest Kampala. Here are a few back-of-the-envelope ideas.

One, we need to stop building stuff in Kampala. Why is Parliament building new chambers bang in the middle of the city and not building an expansive legislative city somewhere in Mpigi? Why doesn’t the Supreme Court remain in Mbale? Why cut down a forest reserve and cram factories into Namanve when Jinja, an industrial city with ready warehouses, a port, electricity and water, is idle?

Two, we need fewer cars on the roads. This means replacing single-user cars with mass transit options. The 14-seater matatu is not an efficient way to get people in and out of the city, and neither are 20-year-old Japanese pieces of junk (sorry, Shinzo Abe). What we need are buses with their own lanes and stops. See Dar es Salaam, for example.

In addition, we need to place a premium on motorised access to the city. This could be in the form of a congestion charge for accessing the central business district, and much higher fees for short-term parking whose proceeds are reinvested in subsidising the cost of mass public transport. This should encourage car-pooling and discourage those who arrive early, park for the whole day, then drive out in the evening.
Three, we need to think of other forms of transport. The Mbulamuti ferry on the River Nile cut down travel time from Kampala to Kamuli by more than two hours; imagine how much time (and traffic) would be saved if we had ferries from Ggaba to Mukono, or Entebbe to Jinja?
And if land compensation is what’s driving costs and delays to road projects, why don’t we invest in trams that run alongside or in the middle of the existing roads and road reserves and, in the process, use up some of the surplus electricity?

If we must build roads – and there is still a case for paved roads – we should consider fixing up the access roads dotted around the city and help draw traffic away from the main thoroughfares. I do not know how much relief the new expressway has brought to the notorious Entebbe Road traffic, but I suspect many residents, given the choice, would have fixed up the small feeder roads between the capital and the airport town before doing the mega project.

There are many more clever things people smarter than your columnist can suggest to deal with the problem, but ultimately, the most important fix is not infrastructure or fancy traffic lights or speed trains; it is discipline and commonsense.
After long and careful consideration, I can confidently say half the traffic congestion in Kampala is caused by stupidity – of taxi drivers stopping in the middle of the road to take on fares, of motorists running red lights or not giving way to joining traffic, of traffic officers playing god in front of traffic lights and that stubborn variant, most common amongst but not exclusive to government drivers refusing to stay in their lanes.

The challenge of our traffic congestion, therefore, is that while you can buy a flyover from the Japanese and an expressway from the Chinese, you can’t buy commonsense even if you sold all the Ipsums in Kampala.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and a poor man’s freedom fighter. [email protected]
Twitter: @Kalinaki.