LAMATA boss: Lagos to improve on other modes of transportation

Abimbola Akinbajo, managing director of Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA), says the state government will improve alternate mode of transportation in addressing frequent traffic congestion.

She spoke on Thursday, during a conversation with Frederic Oladeinde, the commissioner for transportation, at the 2021 Lagos ‘Ehingbeti’ Economic Summit.

Akinbajo said the government will improve other modes of transportation, especially the use of waterways and rail system.

“Traffic will never leave any city. It is about alternate modes of transportation. And that’s where you mention waterways, buses which makes people leave their cars at home and do public transportation,” she said.

“Another part is the rail system. Lagos has been building for a long time but we mustn’t forget that this is the only subnational that has been building a rail system.”

Akinbajo explained that the state government is also seeking ways of integrating the transportation system by developing use of single travel cards.

“We are doing this single travel card for the people of Lagos. If you speak about integration then it has to be cohesive and functional. One of the means is to be able to use a single card to travel across all these modes of transportation,” she said.

“So it will be a card you can use on any mode of transportation. We are rolling it out in the regulated bus system now and we are also going to use it on the rail when it comes to light and we will use it on the waterways. So intermodal transportation is something we are driving at and by mid of this year, we should begin to see amazing changes to our public transportation.”

In his remarks, Oladeinde said Lagos will build a multimodal transportation system that allows for reduction of public transportation costs.

“We will build a multimodal integrated transport system. People need to have access to water transportation, the bus mode and the rail system,” he said.

“Public transport has to be affordable because we need to lift people out of poverty. Also we need to modernise transport system so we are talking about the BRT. There are 14 BRT corridors, 26 water routes because 17 to 20 per cent of Lagos is water and it is amazing that we haven’t optimised the capacity of the waterways.”