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Dar decongestion plans ready
2007-05-16 08:46:25
By Lusekelo Philemon
Dar es Salaam authorities yesterday submitted to the Prime Minister`s Office a draft master plan whose implementation is expected to substantially ease congestion on the city\'s streets.
Abbas Kandoro, the regional commissioner, confirmed this when speaking exclusively to The Guardian in the city on a day Prime Minister Edward Lowassa two months ago picked as the deadline for the city fathers to furnish him with concrete plans seeking to solve the crippling road congestion that the country\'s commercial capital has been wrestling with for months now.
While admitting that the city boasts no more than four main roads that cannot cope with the appreciable rise in the population and the swelling number of vehicles, Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner Abbas Kandoro said the plan contains specific short and long-term proposals to cut down town traffic congestion to the minimum.
`We have submitted the plan to the Prime Minister`s Office as directed, outlining both immediate and long-term strategies which will slow down the current traffic jam particularly in the city centre,` he said.
He named the four main roads as Morogoro, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, Nyerere and Kilwa, adding that moving around in Dar es Salaam was increasingly becoming an irritating, expensive and time-consuming experience.
`We are fully aware that our roads are just too few, narrow and in too bad a state to cope with the current situation. We are working out modalities of upgrading feeder or ring roads, believing that they will help us out,` he said.
He named some of the feeder roads earmarked for upgrading or rehabilitation as Ubungo-Maziwa-Kigogo via Mburahati, Kawe-White Sands Hotel via Oasis, the road just behind the Institute of Social Work via the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (Costech), Mbezi-Kinyerezi-Segerea-Ukonga, Tangi Bovu-Goba-Mbezi Juu and one at Magomeni-Mikumi.
According to the RC, the short-term plan included the deployment of members of the Police Force at every road junction in the city to take an immediate action whenever there were signs of a traffic jam forming.
There would also be public education and awareness campaigns on the friendly use of roads, he pointed out, adding: `There are people who have no discipline at all with regard to observing road usage regulations, including respecting road traffic by-laws. These must be fittingly educated so that they behave better.`
Kandoro cited the `intriguing` decision by city residents to resort to the use of private vehicles as having contributed to the seriousness of the problem of road congestion, expressing the hope that it will one day be possible to reverse the trend and make the streets breathe more effortlessly.
The long-mooted Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit (DART), flyovers, ferry transport in the Indian ocean are some of the long-term plans expected to help in the road decongestion process but no timeframe has been given on their implementation.
`Ferry transport is only possible if there are investors able and willing to provide the relevant services. It would facilitate the transportation of people from Mbweni, Kunduchi and Tegeta to the city centre via the Indian Ocean, giving us much-needed relief,` observed the RC.
He explained that there were also plans to use railway transport from Pugu and Ubungo to the city centre \"to lift part of the burden from the shoulders of the overwhelmed road network`.
The city authorities would collaborate with urban planning experts in recommending ways of making some important services like shopping centres more readily available away from the city`s central business district, he noted further.
As the grand plans await implementation, road transport in the city remains in chaotic state, the traffic police having failed to help bring the situation back to a semblance of order.
Traffic jams have become the order of the day, sometimes forming chains as long as a whole kilometer, with only notorious daladala and other drivers making meaningful movement by overtaking law-abiding ones with the least of care.
`Traffic jams have long become a cancer. They paralyse whole segments of the city, denying us the right to move around and live in comfort and exposing us to all sorts of hazards,` explained Dar es Salaam taxi driver Mokiwa Tupa.
`Commuter bus drivers are especially to blame because most drive as if the city`s roads belong to them. Too bad, the road traffic police contingents treat them too leniently.
Public education on road usage would help a lot,` he added.
Ramo Makani, assistant registrar of the Engineers Registration Board, meanwhile was of the view that a multi-dimensional approach to road congestion was necessary in finding a lasting solution to the problem.
`We need combined efforts as fully as practicable involving all road users and, as much as possible, all other members of the public,` he said, noting that he was speaking as a professional engineer.
He said there was an urgent need to change people\'s attitudes so that more and more people prefer public transport to the private alternative.
`But there is an equally urgent need to improve public transport in the city by creating an enabling environment that will make people to turn to public transport. For now, that is very, very difficult to implement,` he observed.
Dar es Salaam, which is estimated to have a population of over three million, is made up of three municipal councils Ilala, Kinondoni and Temeke.
Apart from road congestion, it has been having a hard time dealing with garbage collection and public water supply.
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