Dealing With Road Congestion

I AM writing in response to an interview held with the City of Windhoek CEO, Mr. Niilo Taapopi on February 17 2010 on National Radio. The plans of expanding the available road space to make socio-economic and other activities accessible to more people is good. But that should not be the only approach to wanting to solve the congestion problem we face.

I will now explain the urban transport problem we face in Windhoek from a more ensuing point. The basic problem we face every day is congestion. This congestion is most likely caused by the following factors. First, rising income levels, which encourage people to buy cars, thereby increasing car ownership because of all the reasons known to us. Secondly, increased car ownership leads to increased car travel, reducing the demand for public transport – the result, an increase in the number of cars on our roads. Thirdly, the increased number of cars on the roads travels mostly on the main transport corridors of Windhoek. Now, these corridors are then filled to capacity only during specific periods of the day. These periods are the morning, mid-day and afternoons. It is usually during these periods that congestion takes place to the point of frustrating motorists.Now, let us look at the interventions employed thus far and planned for the future. Recently, manning of key intersections on these transport corridors has been stopped. The reason therefore is to have traffic officers do the work they are supposed to, that is doing law enforcement – that is getting all the bad guys off the roads. Good! Now the public is left to manage peak travel by themselves. I bet motor vehicle accidents would rise – we could have a look at the comparative statistics a year from now and be able to establish a big hike in accident rates during peak periods. Now, a second approach to alleviate this increased congestion problem, is the plan to develop and upgrade roads. This in itself will not bring the problem to acceptable levels, at least from the viewpoint of an expert on this specific topic. Partly, upgrading the infrastructure will result in better mobility and manoeuvrability of road transport vehicles, with less waiting time and time spent by motorists and passengers on the road. The essence of the problem lies in the fact that vehicle ownership increases all the time, and thus car travel increases correspondingly.Other solutions to the problem should be considered. We know traffic officers are not necessarily experts on transport management, but rather law enforcers. And engineers are not experts on transport management either, but rather experts in design and standards of construction of roads infrastructure. Attending a crash course on transport system management does not make you an expert on the topic overnight. As a professional transport economist, I may add that the business of optimizing traffic flow is a transport economic problem we face. I have a consulting firm dealing specifically with transportation and logistics problems, and the public and other organisations is welcome to contact me in this regard to work towards identifying alternative transport management options.