{UAH} Pojim/WBK: 40 years later, Kampala rediscovers bus lanes - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/40-years-down-the-line--Kampala-rediscovers-bus-lanes-/-/434750/2750464/-/emhjyd/-/index.html

40 years later, Kampala rediscovers bus lanes

There is something about 40 years and nations. For the Biblically oriented, didn't the children of Israel spend 40 years in the desert before reaching the Promised Land after they escaped from captivity?

And in a nation that I know rather well called Uganda, 40 years is proving to be a defining duration. I am looking at the capital city of Kampala today and where it was 40 years ago.

It has taken us exactly 40 years to discover what we lost in 1975. Last weekend, demarcating and marking of bus lanes started in Kampala.

For much of the colonial period and the first decade of Independence, the Uganda Transport Company (UTC) used its green and yellow buses to transport the workers and schoolchildren of the city to their destinations efficiently and affordably.

When the economy started to falter in 1972, the military government imported a fleet of luxury buses from the former Yugoslavia called FAP Duhravo to replace the Leyland and Albion machines from the UK whose spare parts were becoming difficult to procure.

Ugandans cruised around in the beautiful FAP buses until 1975 when they also eventually disappeared due to the old problem of spare parts. The era of the "taxi" had arrived.

The commuter minibuses that today carry 14 passengers appeared such small, unworthy substitutes for the buses that Ugandans simply called them taxis and continue to do so to this day.

Two years ago, private investors launched a city bus service called Pioneer. But because there were no bus lanes in Kampala, the buses were always stuck in the traffic jam with small cars, giving commuters little reason to use them. But the taxman wanted his dues and though the buses were making losses, their bill at the Uganda Revenue Authority was mounting. Pioneer failed to pay their taxes and were closed.

Last month, the Pioneer buses were allowed to return to the road. And now, 40 years after the first death of bus transport in Kampala, the city authorities have taken a concrete step to enable the return of effective bus travel in the city.

You see, the creation of bus lanes has not necessitated building an extra road surface. For 40 confused years, nearly half of the road surface in Kampala has been used for private parking.

Private individuals just drive their cars from home and park them in the outer lane of the street near where they work. Like the confused Jews who wandered for 40 years in the desert, Kampala motorists have been parking cars on the space for driving for 40 years.

So confused was everything that some company was even licensed to charge hourly fees from cars for misusing the road surface that the nation borrows hundreds of millions of dollars to build.

In 1975, Kampala had a population of slightly over 300,000 people and some 10,000 cars. Yet the need for buses was recognised then. Forty years seems to have had a multiplication factor of 10 in this regard.

For where you had 300,000 people, the city has 10 times more people at three million and where there were 10,000 cars, there are now nearly a million — which is about a hundred times more.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: buwembo@gmail.com

40 years later, Kampala rediscovers bus lanes - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/40-years-down-the-line--Kampala-rediscovers-bus-lanes-/-/434750/2750464/-/emhjyd/-/index.html

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