A better way to get from A to B

One of the problems facing a number of African cities is traffic congestion. As economies develop and grow, the amount of traffic just keeps on increasing. There is also an ongoing trend of urbanisation, where people migrate to the cities from the countryside, thus adding to the problem. And our cities, laid out and planned decades ago, just aren't coping.

People living and commuting in places just as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Lusaka or Dar Es Salaam, find themselves having to get up earlier and earlier, to try to beat the traffic and ensure they get to work on time. Most people rely on public transport, but that makes no difference, as this generally takes the form of minibus taxis, which still have to sit in the traffic like everybody else.

When I was in Lusaka recently, it took me one hour during peak time for a journey that takes no more than ten minutes in the middle of the day. The taxi driver commented that the government needs to think about building a new capital city somewhere else, with wider roads, so that traffic will not be such a problem.

But we can't just go around constructing whole new cities from scratch. Firstly it's way too expensive, and secondly, no matter how wide the roads, they will also soon be filled up with cars. No, we need to come up with new ideas, and start to move away from reliance on cars and minibuses. Anyhow, they create terrible pollution and may soon become too expensive to run, what with the petrol price increasing every month.

Many cities internationally rely on underground railways, or metros, for mass urban transport. But these are also very expensive to construct. So a number of cities are looking at bus rapid transport systems (BRT). Bogota in Colombia and Curitiba in Brazil, and just two developing-world cities which have adopted BRT systems, and they work well. The systems make use of very large buses with big doors, so that people can get on and off them quickly. They also use specially-constructed, dedicated bus lanes so the buses don't have to sit in traffic -- they can zip along as fast as they can.

In South Africa, Johannesburg has already begun initial work on a BRT system (in addition to a high-speed train linking Johannesburg and Pretoria. A BRT system for Cape Town is in the planning stages, and Dar Es Salaam is set to begin work on a BRT system later this year. The World Bank has already approved a 100-million dollar loan to pay for the infrastructure. That system should start working in 2011, and the first phase is set to carry about 400-thousand passengers a day.

For anyone who sits in hours-long traffic jams every morning and evening, or has to regularly squeeze in and out of over-crowded buses and taxis, this must be a welcome alternative. New transport systems like this will also hopefully help cut down on pollution and make our cities more pleasant places to live in.