For experts, a ‘working and sustainable national transportation master plan’ is the least the Buhari administration could give the sector. Efforts in this direction in the past were wasted, writes ADEYINKA ADERIBIGBE
One of the gains of the tours of facilities in the sector by the Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi and Minister of State (Aviation) Hadi Sirika last year was the promise of a master plan for the sector.
Amaechi told reporters that the Federal Government was developing a national transportation master plan aimed at diversifying the economy and improving non-oil sector revenue.
If properly handled, the transport sector, he said, could contribute more than the four percent it is generating to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He listed the problems of transportation as bad roads, inadequate fleet of buses and trucks, irregular and inadequate trains and airplanes services as well as congested ports.
Others, he said, are the dearth of trained transport managers and planners, capital restructuring bottlenecks, institutional reforms and ineffective traffic regulations.
“The Buhari administration,’’ he assured, ‘’will pursue the enactment of laws to open up the sector to new investors’’.
To stakeholders, Mr Amaechi needs not exert himself unduly. In fact, they would rather the industry is left as it is without a new master plan.
Transportation consultant Dr Adegboyega Banjo said Amaechi’s position was hardly new.
He said Nigeria has been talking about developing a transportation master plan since 1974. “Sadly, while we keep on talking about developing a masterplan after 55 years of independence, some countries that were nowhere when we started the talks 42 years ago, have copied what we discussed then, and were implementing them,” Banjo said.
Like a national economic rolling plan, experts said the nation ought to have begun the implementation of a master plan long before now, adding that the absence of the policy had been responsible for the uncoordinated growth of the transportation sector.
Rather than developing a new template, the administration, stakeholders argued, should merely dust those policy documents, update them to be in sync with global transportation realities and start implementation.
America, Singapore
and UK Experiences
Some countries have developed a master plan which they update regularly.
In the United States, for instance, states are required to, regularly, update a master plan coordinated by the Department of Transportation (DOT).
The federal regulations requires that each state must prepare and periodically update a statewide intermodal transportation plan that not only addresses how it would tackle specified factors, but covers a period of at least 20 years as a condition to receiving federal transportation fund.
In its 2005 to 2030 masterplan with the theme: “Strategies for a new age: New York State’s transportation Master Plan for 2030″, an update of the state’s 1996 plan, the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), for instance, addressed New York’s vision for transportation and the future plans for the sector.
The New York transportation landscape have the following parameters: 11 million licenced drivers, 10.5 million motor vehicles, riding over 113,000 miles of local, state and interstate roads and 17,000 local and state highway bridges.
About 2.6 billion transit passenger trips are made yearly, including a daily average of 4.8 million subway riders. Over 488 communities are linked by intercity bus service, which serve 2.6 million passengers yearly.
No fewer than 4,800 miles of railroads serve or connect to 31 passenger rail stations, and carry 78 million tons of freight yearly.
Also, 18 commercial service airports serve over 78 million passengers yearly, and an additional 495 public and private airports.
There are five major water ports, numerous private ports and a 524 mile state canal system. Hundreds of pedestrian, bicycle, and train facilities statewide. With a mere eight million drivers and four million vehicles with a motley of uncordinated seven seaports and over 20 ailing airports, Nigeria is a mere fraction of what New York has to cope with.
Singapore Masterplan
In its new 25-year master plan that will end in 2030, Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) vision for land transport for the next 20 years include having eight in 10 households living within a 10- minute walk from a train station; 85 per cent of public transport journeys (less than 20km) completed within 60 minutes; and 75 per cent of all journeys during peak hours undertaken on public transport.
In the 12-page paper reviewed by Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC), the masterplan’s major investment project is to have the private sector play a major role in its development.
London’s masterplan
A key component of the new London Transportation Masterplan (LTM) known as the Masterplan on Transportation (MoT), which terminates in 2030, is focused on addressing travel behaviours and tailor transportation alternatives to meeting those changing needs.
In a 177-page document prepared by AECOM in May 2013, the masterplan intends to continue to work on making seamless transportation available to residents, businessmen and visitors.
The Nigerian challenge
Experts said a transportation masterplan that would address the nation’s status as the biggest economy on the African continent is important.
In a changing global economy, where travel demands of customers are becoming complex, new modes, they argued, needed to be introduced if Nigeria must continue to be relevant.
Chief Executive, Lagos State Vehicle Inspection Service (VIS) Dr Hafiz Toriola said an integrated master plan that includes all modes of transportation, especially land, water and air, must be pursued.
He also canvassed the involvement of the 36 states in designing templates of masterplan that suit their environment, while the Federal Government set the rules of integration and facilitates and coordinates inter-state involvement.
He said: “There should be a devolution of power, which would see the federal government take full charge of all roads on the exclusive list, (Trunk A) roads, while state gain full autonomy to run all roads on the concurrent list (Trunk B) and local governments the residual (Trunk C) roads.”
Former Dean, School of Transportation Studies, Lagos State University, Dr Tajudeen Olukayode BawaAllah, wondered why the government ought to be taken seriously in its bid to develop a transportation masterplan for the country.
BawaAllah, who was a part of similar moves in the past, accused the bureaucracy of raking up the policy issue “because there is no more money to share”.
The don said all that the Amaechi-led team needed to know are in previous documents that had been submitted to the Federal Government since 1987, urging the new helmsman to request for the drafts of such policies submitted to it to enable him decide on what is required in developing a masterplan or a transport policy for the country.
He recalled that apart from the report of the Committee of Experts on National Transport Policy for Nigeria, which was submitted to Minister of Transport and Aviation in October 1987, a similar draft of the National Transport Policy was prepared for the Federal Ministry of Transport and Aviation in June 1990 and “circulated in a restricted form among selected transport industry professionals in order to obtain informed comments on its trust, emphasis, scope and structure before being given wider circulation before its formal submission for government approval”.
This, he said, was followed up in May 1993, when another draft National Transport Policy was prepared by Ministry of Transport for government’s approval.
“In June 2002, the Transport Sector Reform Committee (TSRC) prepared another Working Document titled ‘National Transport Policy Options’ for the Federal Ministry of Transport.
Mr Patrick Adenusi traced the mushrooming of all illegal activities in the sector and the manner in which all kinds of persons find their way into the sector to the absence of a master plan.
Describing transportation as a major part of humanity, Adenusi, Executive Director, Safety Without Borders (SWB), wondered why the government had to wait till everything was almost collapsing before it thought of regulating the sector.
He said the absence of a regulatory policy informed why people were still bringing in right-hand drive vehicles into the country in 2015, with the Customs still inspecting same, even though such vehicles have been banned since the 1970s.
According to Adenusi, just like nobody goes into the aviation industry and buy an aeroplane and start operating it, the other subsectors of the transportation industry ought to be strictly regulated.
He said the problem lied not in policies but the implementation, urging the government to adopt the policies ratified by the National Transport Council (NTC) – the highest advisory body on transportation.
“If they are not ready to do this, they had better not waste our money,” he added.
Though he lauded the Federal Government for thinking up the masterplan, Mr. Adeolu Dina of the Centre for Transport Studies, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Ogun State said more important, is that the government should put in the public domain a policy guiding the plans.
He said if such document exists, states, private organisations, investors and individuals could key into the government’s plans and programmes.
Dina said such a national policy would address the fears of the development of one mode having adverse effect on the others.
In terms of economic impact, such policy document, Dina continued, would address the distribution of goods and equipment, adding that the railways can enhance the industrial sector and, ultimately, reduce their cost.
He said: “Again, passenger train operations are unprofitable in most part of the world, with many countries operating it on subsidies, so what do we expect in Nigeria, where lines have no profit potential?
“In terms of safety, how do we reduce the accident index of the country, reduce the presence of trailers and ensure pipeline distribution or improve security around transport infrastructure, insurance of goods and passengers, and acquire national transport data for national planning?’’
Conclusion
A masterplan, experts argue, would ensure that every state will be maximally developed.
Such document would help the states to evolve their own plan and efficiently manage its physical development.
Having someone like Amaechi drive the change initiative in transportation may mean it is time unusual for the transportation sector, and that many stakeholders agreed, is the only way to bring sanity to a sector that has been long abandoned and neglected by policy makers.