Why govt suspended city transport plan

Government has suspended its earlier plan for the city’s transport system for taxis and boda bodas to fast-track a legal framework under which the same scheme can be implemented.

A senior director from Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), who preferred anonymity, said whereas government had sought to implement the plan this year, there was no existing policy under which it could work.

The source also said government will instead focus on the nationwide policy instead of concentrating on only Kampala since taxis and boda bodas operate across the country but without any regulation.

“There are various issues which came up as we planned to roll out the city transport plan. For instance, there were concerns from transporters who argued that their views hadn’t been captured. We also noticed that majority of boda boda cyclists are illiterate and cannot appropriately use the technology of Apps as we had earlier proposed,” the source said.

Last year, the government through KCCA, unveiled a plan to ban boda bodas from the city centre and create free zones outside the Central Business District (CBD), organise elections of the apex body for all boda boda and taxi operators, reduce stages, and register all people working in the transport sector.

Government had also proposed that all boda boda cyclists should register with accountable digital companies such as Safe Boda and Bolt, which use Apps to pick passengers and goods for delivery.

The plan was triggered by the unending fights which have previously paralysed transportation in the city.

Although Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago asked them to halt the implementation of the plan until a legal framework is made, the then minister for Kampala, Ms Betty Amongi, said a statutory instrument would be made to ease the implementation of the plan.

Mr Lukwago had argued that the city’s transport system must address the demands of the metropolitan area due to its swelling population.

By press time, we could not reach Kampala Minister Minsa Kabanda and her deputy Kyofatogabye Kabuye for a comment.

KCCA spokesperson Daniel Nuwabiine said the plan has not been abandoned but rather there are engagements to discuss how it can be implemented.

The big problem

The current city transport sector is informally self-regulating, with a number of governance issues, leaving passengers at the mercy of the private operators, who decide as and when to increase or reduce fares.

Besides lack of regulation, the available means of public transport, including the 14-seater taxis, and boda bodas, which dominate the sector, have limited capacity to offer transport services.

Last month, President Museveni oversaw the finalisation of plans between KCCA and METU Bus Industries to assemble and manufacture buses that will be deployed to ease transport in the city and its metropolis.

However, transport operators argue that the new system may fail if government does not first address the existing challenges crippling the transport sector in the city.

In 2012, Pioneer Easy Buses hit Kampala routes following a sit-down strike by taxi operators, which paralysed the entire city transport.

But the company’s operations would later be affected by heavy taxes imposed by Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), and lack of special lanes which had been promised to them by KCCA.

Mr Gordon Abesiga, the Pionner Bus manager, told this newspaper in a previous interview that the reason Pioneer Buses failed is because government forced them to start operations before they set up management structures and thus they entered the market prematurely.

“When we came to the market, you remember that there was a taxi drivers’ strike and we were forced to bring the buses on the streets even without number plates. We were not yet ready. We were setting up our management structures and we were forced to enter the market prematurely,” Mr Abesiga told Daily Monitor in an interview.

The Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (Utoda) chairperson, Mr Willy Ndyomugyenyi, told this newspaper in an interview yesterday that government should first regulate the transport sector before they introduce any other plans.

The regulation, Mr Ndyomugyenyi said, will not only reduce the current fights in the sector, but also restore order.

Better planning

Mr Charles Koojo Amooti, the chief executive officer of Urban Research and Training Consultancy Ltd (URTC), and an urban planner, recently told this newspaper that there must be an integration of the multi-modal transport with land use planning if the current transport crisis is to be fixed at all.

He noted that since high-urban density offers the opportunity to reduce both travel distances and pollution, all major development should be public transport-centred and that the development should primarily occur to close the existing gaps, or at least to major centres within the metropolitan area.

“Development should be physically laid out around public transport and should also be taken to mean that the whole approach to the development is centred on considerations about the quality of the public transport and, moreover, that development design is such that the majority of access to the public transport will be through walking and cycling,” he said.