Why World Bank Will Not Support Lagos State Rail System

seen enough traffic. Honestly, the government of Lagos State is ready. With what we are doing with Marina Express, it shows we are ready. The federal government is helping us to make things work.

You talked about the bus reform initiative earlier. Can you tell us more about that?

Lagos State needs to move to the next level. As we all know, Lagos State is a mega city. We cannot call Lagos a mega city while we are not able to provide a comfortable transport system for the people. That is the way the Ambode administration is looking at it. That is why the administration is coming up with the Bus Reform Initiative. The initiative is to provide air-conditioned, comfortable, safe mode of transport system for the people. It is not that we are taking danfo off the road, but we are replacing it with a better option. Who are the people we are using? It is the same drivers that are operating in the state. Already, we are training the same set of drivers in Badagry and Epe. We are training them vigorously. People are asking us every day: why have we not started? But work is going. We cannot purchase this kind of buses and give them to drivers without proper training. If you want to go to where we are training, we can make an arrangement for you. We are not going to bring drivers from anywhere. The ratio is this: for one big bus, we need two and half drivers. If we are bringing 100 buses, we need 250 drivers. And we plan to bring 5,000 buses to start with. On this note, we are talking about 15,000 drivers. Where are we going to get them from? We are going to get them from the same set of drivers in the state. But our plan is to re-culture these drivers. We want to rehabilitate them. We want to re-orientate them. Look at the Ikeja Bus Terminal you talked about. You will not see paraga in that place. If you go to Oshodi transport interchange, you will not see paraga there. All these new bus terminals are not garages. If you will see anything at all, you’ll perhaps see KFC, MTN or Airtel. It is going to be a place where people can relax. When you are coming in the evening, you can see down and relax. So, we want to create a hub where people can sit down and drink coffee. This is the king of things this government is trying to do in Lagos State. It is not that we want to take danfo off the road. We just want to replace it with comfortable transport system that will appeal to the people. We are targeting the middle class. Let me say this. Somebody starts working today. The next thing is to start thinking about how to get a car. It should not be. If you go abroad, people are thinking about how to have their own homes immediately they start working. The reason is simple. If they come out of their homes, they can enter a comfortable public bus or train. In that case, what do they need the car for? That is what we are targeting. We want to change the orientation of our middle class. When they come out of schools, their first target is not to start thinking about how to buy a vehicle, but how to own a home to start with. That is where we are going to. So, it is beyond danfo people, though they are part of what we are doing. We have co-opted them. We have talked to the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW). They are exactly part of what we are doing. It is beyond taking the danfo off the road. It is about restructuring the economy of Lagos State. It is also about re-orientating the people of Lagos State. With this, people can now be thinking about things that reign or things that are tangible. If you use your first savings to buy a car, it does not make sense. The day you purchase a car, it starts depreciating. If you pay for your mortgage today, it starts appreciating. This is the kind of things we are looking at.

You also talked about the state’ s strategic transport master plan. How many years does the master plan cover? We have done the first one. It will elapse in 2032. But by 2019, we are planning to take it 2040. In the plan, we have taken into consideration the future realities of the state, especially its growing population.

Since your agency deals with transportation generally, what is LA MATA doing about water transportation?

In planning, LAMATA is involved in water transportation. But in implementation, we have Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) in charge. But like I said earlier, we have strategic transport master plan. If you look at the master plan, we have been able to identify 26 routes on our waterways. Currently, through the World Bank, we have been able to secure a grant to conduct studies on our waterways. And the report will be submitted by the end of September. When the new Commissioner for Transportation, Mr. Ladi Lawanson, came in, one of his focal points has been waterway. Just last month, we had a roundtable on waterway. It is something at the heart of the state government. We discovered that only about one percent of Lagos population used our waterway. But we are just planning to take up it to 20 percent. That is the agenda of Lagos State. Basically, LAMATA is limited to planning. But in implementation, it is the LASWA. And of course, the Ministry of Transportation is looking into this.

What impact is the rising population of Lag os State having on the transport system?

It is seriously impacting on our transport system. As they are coming, people must move from one place to another. Two things are critical as people move into the state. The first one is public transport while the second is housing. We have been able to capture in our strategic transport master plan. We know the rate at which people are coming in. We know the population of Lagos State. We know the modes of transportation. We know the pattern of movement. That is we have been able to come up with master plan. Recently, another thing we are working on is not-motorised transport (NMT) system. We have about 40 per cent of people moving around Lagos, walking from one place to another. We have been able to develop a policy paper around it. We have collaborated with foreign people already. It has been given to the Ministry of Transportation. Very soon, we will come up a policy. You will begin to see us developing pedestrian walkways around Lagos so that people can walk from Point A to Point B seamlessly. You discover that people do not walk again because there is not facility for it. That is what we want to do so that people can walk. If you go to London, you see people coming out of their houses and walking to bus or train stations. But people are talking here that our bus stations are too far. It is part of the plan to keep our people in good shape. When you walk about 100 or 200 metres in the morning and you do the same in the evening, you do not need special exercise again. On the streets of London, that is why you see people in the morning going to bus or train stations. This is one of the things we are looking at. When the policy is out, the implementation will follow immediately.

When you talk about inter-modal transport system, you can take away cable car system. Is LA MATA considering the option of cable carsystem?

I have explained our strategic transport master plan in detail. The master plan has identified three cable car routes. People have shown interest in only one of them. The project is still on. They (the company working operating a cable car system in Lagos) started very well. Until recently, they have been able to secure all the stations. I think they are having issue with funding. But the project is still on. The state government has not taken it away from them. The other two cable car routes have been part of our strategic transport master plan from the beginning.

What is happening to the other two? People have not come up for the other two. They have not indicated interest in them. Like I said, we have six rail lines. But investors have only shown interest in three: green, red and the blue that we are constructing. People have not really realised what we have. I visited somewhere in Spain about four years ago where there is a family running what we are doing. We can see what they are doing. People have not really realised what we have. People are not really coming forward to take advantage of what we have. That is why the state government decided to take up the blue line. The blue line is being constructed by the state government. We are using the internally generated revenue (IGR) to construct it. The state government is using your tax to construct it. That is why it was as if it was taking a while. It is huge.

What happened to the World Bank loan? The World Bank will not sponsor rail. Aside, we did not take money from the World Bank to build the blue line.

We used the money we obtained from the World Bank to construct the bus rapid transit (BRT) along Ikorodu road. The World Bank does not sponsor rail because they will tell you they can use the money to construct one rail for 10 BRTs. So, they do not sponsor rail.

For awhile now, we have not heard about the partnership between the Lag os State Govern- men ta nd Japan International Cooperation A gen cy(JI CA) to build M arin a-Ikoy i-Le k ki monorail.Why?

Actually, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is ready to give us loan to for the project. They call it monorail that will run between Victoria Island and Ikoyi. But this administration has been able to analyse the traffic situation in the axis. If we have a monorail that will run between Ikoyi and Victoria Island, who are the people that will board it? Where are they coming from? They are people coming from Ajah. They are the people coming from Eleko. They are the people coming from Ibeju. While these people are stranded there and you build monorail in Victoria Island and Ikoyi, what will happen? It is going to be a wasted effort. We now proposed to use the loan to construct the green line. That is where we have a challenge now. Already, the state government is working on the blue line that will bring people from Okokomaiko to Marina. Our system in Lagos State is like people are going from mainland to the Island. That is where everybody is going. What we can use to change this traffic direction is the rail system we are talking about. We call it transport-oriented development (TOD).

This will encourage people to build real estate around train stations. By the time we begin to have real estate, it will attract banks. When banks are around train stations, people will start setting up eatery there. Then, you will begin to see hotels and shopping malls coming up along the corridor. As time goes, people will not need to move from the mainland to the Island anymore.

The critical problem that we have now is the green line. We are constructing the blue line already. Marina Express is trying to build the red line. The green line is coming from Lagos Free Trade Zone to Marina. If the JICA can fund the green line for us, you can come back to the monorail later. We do not want to put the cart before the horse. Go and see people coming from Ajah. If you are coming from Ajah to Marina, you have to leave your house by 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. If you stay at home until 6:00 a.m., you are in serious problem. When you have a rail system, you come at your time. We have been able to target these three axes: Sango-Ota, Okokomaiko and Ajah. If we are able to do these rail lines, we have honestly been able to solve almost 50 per cent of our traffic challenges. But we are still negotiating with the JICA on the green line.

Dabiri