Road Traffic Congestion and The Quest For Effective Transportation

Nigerian Society of Engineers Annual Conference Proceedings CANAAN 2011
ROAD TRAFFIC CONGESTION AND THE QUEST FOR EFFECTIVE

TRANSPORTATION
Frederick .O. Agbonika
Godab Nigeria limited, Abuja.
1. ABSTRACT
Transportation is to the nation what the
veins are to the human body, a blockage in
any artery or vein can be very bad if not
deadly and so effective transportation is a
subject of great importance to the whole
nation and as such it cannot be
overlooked. Over the years the nation has
tried to improve the road network system
in building capacity in terms of new roads
and bridges, to ease the traffic flow, but
despite this, the age old menace called
congestion still raises its head and still
thrives and is on the increase in the
various commercial cities across the
Nation. This paper seeks to find out the
effect of congestion the daily working
lives of residents of the Federal Capital
territory (Abuja) specifically those
working within the central Business
district in order to find out how congestion
affects them during the day and the days
of the week it most affects them, also the
paper seeks to find out the percentage of
those that work in town and reside on the
outskirts and those that reside in town.
Finally the paper seeks to give
recommendations that will definitely usher
us into our promised land of good and
effective transportation systems.
2. NOMENCLATURE
Symbol
Identification
Qk
Total
time
spent
travelling to reach destination
Qk
Total time at free flow
without traffic
Qp
Number of people
PtD
Total delay due to
congestion
Tcc
Total cost of Congestion
3. INTRODUCTION
3.1 Overview of transportation and
congestion
Transportation systems dates back to the
pre-historical era and can be said to have
evolved with man in his quest for

development, because as communities
grew so the need for interactions between
them and hence the need for road
networks for leisure and business and
business being the most driving force
since it leads to economic benefits to the
community.
In Nigeria the history of our road networks
has been an interesting one as the story
can be divided into pre-colonial, colonial
and post colonial era, in the pre-colonial
era the roads that existed were foot paths
and trails that lead to communities and
village markets, this however improved
upon the arrival of the colonial masters,
who came with modifications and
transformed the trails and foot paths to
single gauge roads, it was an
improvement, but it wasnt done for
development purpose but it was strictly for
administrative and self serving purposes,
According to Thagensen (1) the road
network of developing countries are more
spares than that of developed countries,
the society transport system was done to
evacuate raw materials from mines,
plantations and agricultural estates to the
coast for shipment to Europe, so this roads
were not adequate for an independent
economy, and these were the roads
inherited by new African states.
The next phase started on the first of
October, 1960 and continues up till now, a
period this paper refers to as the post
colonial era. As the new Government took
over she did not inherit a road network
system that was going to usher in
economical growth but they had inherited
a system that was not going to help them
achieve it. So on the long run much more
had to be invested in the designing and
construction of new roads and bridges that
will meet the demand of the new Nation,
but along the line the thinking pattern of
our policy makers and designers had been
affected and the child of that union was
the increase of congestion on our road

ways in major towns and cities of the
Nation from Lagos to Kano and now
Abuja, because roads and infrastructure
are oriented towards private cars to the
neglect of public vehicles.oni (2)
3.2 TRAFFIC CONGESTION
jinbo (3) wrote in his research paper that, a
balance has to be drawn however, that
traffic congestion even though is a
problem to the economic life of the
Nation; it is also a measure or sign of
economic growth, because the transport
industry is the lifeline of natural economic
growth and the main force of material
activities and on the other hand the fast
development of the Natural economy
needs developed transportation industry
because as the economy develops it exerts
a pushing effect on the transport industry.
The issue with congestion however is that
it has to be managed properly so as to
minimize its negative effect on the
populace, because it has costs and this cost
consists of incremental delays, vehicle
operating cost i.e. fuel and wear, pollution
emissions and stress that results from
interference among vehicles in the traffic
build up particularly as the traffic volumes
approach a roads built capacity, or better
still when a road traffic flow exceeds its
effective capacity leading to slower and
less productive journey, timothy(4)also
found out that the cost of traffic
congestion consist of incremental delays
in vehicle operating costs in terms of wear
and tear.
Also Clifford et al(5) wrote that social
costs ,sky rockets and journeys to perform
household tasks, commute to work or
freight delivery takes longer. In another
submission, Robin et al (6) said traffic
congestion can also be seen as a product
of the nature of supply and demand:
because as we understand in economics,
capacity is time consuming and costly to
build and is fixed for a long period of
time, demand on the other hand however
fluctuates over time, hence transportation
services cannot be stored smooth
imbalances between capacity and demand.
George (7),In a recent study in the united
states of America, discovered that the
average lost time of an urban motorist due
to traffic congestion increased from 16

hours per year in 1982 to 62 hours in the
year 2000, from this we can see that
congestion problem is as a result of
demographic and market forces that are
difficult to change, because you cannot
restrict peoples movement due to
congestion rise in a specific locality.
As stated in our National Transport
policy(8) the Government has tried
severally to address the issues arising from
capacity over stretch as it tries to in its
policy implementations strive towards
providing an efficient transport system
that serves the needs of the people in all
aspects, be it air, rail water and roads. But
all this has not been sufficient in arresting
the problem of the rising trend of
congestions in our major cities,
3.3 ROOT OF CONGESTION
All over the world, most government
spending on roads is not evenly done as it
doesnt benefit the population equally; the
highest spending for example in places
like America is spent on roads. Out of
100% ear marked for transportation, 80%
is spent on roads and a mere 20% is spent
on public transportation a glaring
discovery as reported by, Robert (9).from
this we can see that congestion is purely a
case of policy and management missmatch because according to Bertini et al
(10), any city with a population greater
than 200,000 people is required to develop
a congestion management system (CMS)
and implement it as part of the
metropolitan
transportation
planning
process, this is further buttressed by
Jonathan(11),in his paper where he re
stated that the demand for transportation
infra structure arises out of private and
collective decisions by households, firms,
and units of government whose
motivations are not always well easily
understood
by
those
who
plan
transportation infrastructure.
There is also another important reason,
why policy makers have not done more to
reduce congestion according to David et al
(12) and the reason is simple and is that of
lack of understanding about how
congestion negatively impacts our cities
and their ability to be competitive. Traffic
congestions increases cost to workers,
families and it increasingly takes more

time and money to get to where we want
to go and as it worsens it significantly
reduces economic competiveness. This is
because in selecting hosting nation for
hosting competitions the committees place
high premiums on the traffic situations of
the intending hosting cities, so there is
high tendencies that nations with high
congestion rates wont be picked, also the
cost of transportation of goods and
services will be increased, and the extra
cost is burn by the public in most cases if
not all, because they pay for the transport
services that have been capitalized.
At this point I must however make a very
cautious statement about congestion.
congestion even though has negative
tendencies as it adds cost to living is not
generally bad in the sense that it is an
evidence of economic growth and boom,
and the European conference of ministers
of transport (13), summed it up nicely by
saying that the question is not really about
eradicating congestion, but rather how to
avoid excessive congestion, which is the
heart of congestion management policies.
3.4
COST OF CONGESTION
Congestion has a cost and that cost is

usually borne by the Commuter Phil(14)
in his paper laid the ground work to really
ascertain the cost of congestion, for clarity
and for the purpose of this paper, I have
given his equation some constant symbols
for easy mathematical expression.
The stated that to calculate congestion cost
to the economy, one will have submit
(total time spent travelling in reaching a
destination) QK
from (total time if anybody could travel at
free flow speed) QK1
multiplied by (Number of people) QP
will give (total delay due to congestion)
PtD
(Total delay) multiplied by ptD
(Value of time) i = Total cost of
congestion. TCC
i.e.
Tcc = QK1 QK x QP = PtD X i
4.0
ANALYSIS OF THE DATA
To find out first hand information on the

traffic situation in the municipal area of
the Federal Capital, a total of 200
questionnaires were randomly distributed
round the Central Business District Area
of Abuja metropolis, out of the 200
questionnaires 183 were returned filled
while 17 were not returned. The data
analysis is presented in the appendix of
this paper.
4.1
ANALYSIS OF THE DATA
From Table 1, the general population

makes up 40% of the occupational
population made of business men and
traders, while civil servants followed by
36% and others follow with 23.5%. In
Table 2, we recorded 81.42% of the total
sample population stay on the outskirts
with only 18.57% staying within the city
centre.
Traffic congestion highs were also noticed
in the evenings with 86.5% as seen in
Table 3. In Table 4, 81.3% said that there
was a direct effect on the transportation
due to the congestion with only 19.12%
saying there was not transport for increase.
In Table 5, the fare increase is shown
against the percentage increase with 10%
increment to the fare begin the highest
40.43% followed by 20% increment at
22.4%.
Out of the sample only 48% have heard of
BRT (Bus Rapid Transport) with 32.50%
have not head of it ,19.50% do not have an
idea about what it is as shown in table 6
In Figure 1, 8.00am is most congested
time while 6.00pm is the most congested
time in the evening with 149 centres in
Figure 2. Also, the percentage of public
transport to private transport is 91.25%
against 8.74% respectively in Table 7. In
the sample, the age group 21-40 were the
highest with 36.61% followed by 31-40
with 34.42% in Table 8.
i.e. QK1 QK x QP = Ptd

PtD x i = Tcc
Finally, Monday was discovered to be the

most congested day of the week with
35.05% followed by Tuesday with 22.68
respectively as seen in table 9 and Figure
3.
based on facts and figures and not just a

case of super imposition of plans on new
lay outs
From the analysis, we see that 40% of the

sample population are business people and
as such the roads will be busy at almost
every time of the day, then when you add
the civil servants who make up 36% to the
equation we have a traffic load of 76%
road users per time and considering the
fact that 81.42% of the sample population
stays out of town it adds presence on the
road network each morning and evening
as the 81.42% enter and leave the city.
In order for us to adhere on effectual

transportation
system
in
Nigeria,
congestion should be taken seriously as it
directly and in-directly affects the
economic life of the nation layer
percentage of Nigerians prefer private cars
to public vehicles a trend that gives birth
to congestion.
This also shows in the traffic congestion

being high in the morning and evenings at
levels high as 81.5% and 86.5%
respectively. This also goes a long way in
affecting the transportation fare as most
public transporters charge more as a result
of the fact that their time will be wasted in
traffic, so 81.3% of the sample population
attest to this fact and most time the fares
are increased for as low as 10% and high
of up to 100% but mostly 10% due to the
recorded 40% concerning to this.
The most congested time in the morning
time is 8.00am and 6.00pm for evening;
also the up and mobile age in the
population sample is 21 30 years age
bracket.
For congestion to be fully understood
traffic patterns world have to be studied
and developmental changes would have to
be taken into consideration during the
design stages of a committing layout. The
truth is that traffic and congestion cannot
be totally eradicated because even in
developed societies like America a lot is
spent on decongestion as seen in Figure 4.
Over here in Nigeria, even though there
has been a considerable improvement in
road planning and design it is still a copy
of our colonial history Daniel (15) which
need to be reversed because it is lacking of
a study, transportation architecture . Nick
(16).which involves detailed planning
CONCLUSION
Our history is that of materialism and no

of cars per household is a thing of
competition. Our problem lies in the inability to make the public welfare
attractive so people would rather go to
work with their own cars than take the
bus, and where the people are willing to
take the bus, the facility is not available.
This can be seen from this paper as a lot of
people have not lead of BRT (Bus Rapid
Transport), there seems to be a disconnect
between the government, policy markers
and the public, so tackling congestion has
turned out to be the case of the wild
goose chase because there seem to be no
solution on the horizon.
But there is hope if this disconnect can be
corrected and hence the need for
Engineering Transport Management to be
resuscitated to take are of the sector.
RECOMMENDATION
The Nigeria society of engineers should
come up with a white paper that addresses
the need for traffic engineering in Nigeria.
If we are to seriously tackle this mean are
called congestion.
Traffic research should be re-activated so
that recurrent congestions due to the
variable factors such as road works
accidents and population growth are
known per time.
Also, public enlightenment on the benefits
of public transportation should be re-
activated and public transport services

such as shuttle, rail, BRT and metro
should be introduced.
The use of Geographic information system
(GIS) in gathering traffic information
should be enforced as it would help in the
real time management of congestion.
The traffic could also be managed by
limiting the entry of private cars and
vehicles into the city centres during the
week, by creating private vehicle car parks
at the city entrance where commuters can
park their cars and board the public
transport means of getting into town
which could be either by train, BRT, train
or taxi. If this is done it would go a long
way in making sure that the design
capacities of our city roads are not
stretched.
Another way of tackling this is, by
decentralizing the concentration of public
builds from the city centre, as we saw in

the survey, majority of the population
troop into town for the purpose of work,
thereby creating the traffic situation. This
could be corrected by balancing the
location of offices on the outskirts, by
doing that congestion will be brought
down by more than half.
Provision of special routes for lorries with
designated parks will also go a long way
in reducing traffic, also the VIO could
help in making sure that only fit cars are
on our roads as another major cause of
congestion is broken down vehicles in
traffic.
Finally, car owners should be made to pay
the true cost of owning the vehicle at that
it will stem the tide of impulsive buying of
private are for it is clear that if our public
interests are taken care of, then private
interests will have no choice than to
follow.
APPENDIX I
Table 1:
Occupation
No.
Percentage
Table 2:
Occupational Distribution
Civil Servant
66
36%
Business
74
40%
Constant Fare
0%
42
22.9%
Table 6:
Civil Servant
149
81.42%
Morning
163
81.5%
Morning
148
35
Evening
81.3%
19.12%
Congestion Against fare Increase

Increase
10%
74
40.43%
20%
30%
40%
50%
100%
41
22.4%
0
-
0
-
24
13.1%
2
1.09%
Those that have heard of BRT System of Transport
Yes
96
48%
No
65
32.50%
Table 7:
Evening
173
86.5%
Effect of Congestion on Transportation Fare
Response
Yes
No
Table 5:
Total
183
100%
Traffic Congestion in the Morning and Evening
Response
Yes
No
Table 4:
Void
21
10.5%
Traffic Pattern
City Center Residents

34
18.57%
Table 3:
Others
43
23.5%
No Idea
22
19.50%
Public Transport Vs Private Transport
Public Transport
167
91.25%
Private Transport
16
8.74%
Table 8:
Age Distribution
Age group
Nos
13 20
21 30
31 40
41 50
51 60
61 and Above
Total
16
67
63
26
9
2
183
Table 9:
Percentage
(%)
8.74%
36.61%
34.42%
14.20%
4.92%
1.01%
99.98%
Days of the week most congested

Days
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
No.
136
88
75
59
27
2
1
Percentage
(%)
74.3
22.68
19.33
15.21
5.41
0.52
0.26
APPENDIX II
Fig. 1:
Most Congested Time A.m

180
NO. OF PEOPLE
85
74
4
3
2
0
4
Fig. 1:
6.30
Most Congested Time P.m

TIME
149
NO. OF PEOPLE
7
5
3
2
2
1
4.30
5.30
6.00
TIME
9.30
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Nigerian Society of Engineers Annual Conference Proceedings CANAAN 2011