Traffic jungle chaos

Roselyne Sachiti Features Editor
Harare’s public transport system has been described by many commuters and experts as a perfect example of “organised” chaos. With commuter omnibuses, popularly known as kombis, being the only players in the city’s public transportation system, the chaos has sky-rocketed since Independence in 1980.
Most commuters remember the good old days just a couple of decades ago when they used the popular “United”, then Zupco omnibuses which had a scheduled timetable.

Set up by a municipal-owned company in the 1930s, it was taken over by a foreign investor, Salisbury United Omnibus Company for years, then Harare United Omnibus Company, before being merged with its sister company Zupco on nationalisation.

When the economy hit a bad patch in the 1980s, Zupco also suffered because it was not innovative enough to adapt to the new environment.

Their fleet depleted drastically and a wide gap for privately-owned commuter omnibuses opened following the liberalisation of the transport system in the mid-1990s.

Since the demise of Zupco and the National Railways of Zimbabwe which offered the Freedom Train service to Harare commuters, nothing has been done to revive the public transport system. Instead, commuters have many unanswered questions and all they have received from responsible authorities are empty promises.

The gap continues to stretch and commuters feel the excruciating pain.

Experts like senior lecturer in the Department of Rural and Urban Planning at the University of Zimbabwe, Dr Innocent Chirisa, say the major challenge with Harare’s public transport system is its lack of responsiveness to modern transformation hence lack of robustness.

Secondly, he says, the system is outdated.

“In 1993, the liberalisation of the transport sector in keeping with the economic reforms of structural adjustment programme ushered in a difficult-to-manage cancer of the kombis.

“The radial pattern of roads leading into the city centre makes it difficult to manage traffic getting into the city from all suburbs and parts of the country,” he points out.

He adds that traffic flow has increased yet little has been done to make the infrastructure accommodate such traffic especially in the morning and evening peak hours.

“Traffic in the city centre and the roads radiating from the centre produce a messy reality and a nightmare for road users . . . Policy makers are reluctant to change the system of kombis that fuel traffic congestion because the kombis are their cash cows at personal level.

“The policy makers and implementers have become the regulators and providers of transport which in itself is a self-conflicting role. How can you set an exam, sit for it and mark it yourself and we then fail to call that self-conflict?” he questions.

Dr Chirisa says mass transit systems are the solution for public transportation. These, he says, could be buses, train or trams.

A tram is a rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets (called street running), and also sometimes on separate rights of way.

Dr Chirisa adds that conventional buses carry more people than mini-buses or private cars.

“Should those with private cars be willing to do car-pooling, that will help in a big way to reduce the problem of road congestion. Developing trams and train systems needs careful planning and not a business as usual approach.

“The problem with the current Freedom Train is that it is heavy and follows tracks constructed in the 1890s when the British South Africa Company was linking Salisbury to its major cities and towns.

“What are needed are light trains that are both efficient and designed to address short-distance passenger needs,” said Dr Chirisa.

According to him, demands for the railways system have changed have changed.

Creating an effective intra-urban railways system will require “nesting” and connecting all points of the city, not in a linear path but tying all places that matter, he says.

The same should apply to the tram system, according to Dr Chirisa.

“The major setback will always be infrastructure financing and acquisition of the rolling stock.

“Mass transit is the obvious solution but the reasons for keeping away from it require change of mindset and ensuring that the city’s vibrancy in economic terms is restored.

“We need to ask, if we are developing such state-of-the-art system which conforms to current demands, for whom are we developing it? How are we harnessing the resources to do it? What kind of an urban fabric are we creating?” he worries.

Reviving Zupco and the National Railways of Zimbabwe, he suggests, must be informed by and meet the new challenges and needs of urban passengers.

“Smart partnerships can be the way to go. Partnership arrangements including joint ventures and others in the form of build-own-operate, build-own-operate-transfer, needed to be assessed well with proper negotiations done.

“Politics must not dictate the pace of these arrangements but the rules that define the game. Institutions must operate right,” he emphasises.

It is sad Zimbabwe trails behind South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and even Ethiopia in terms of infrastructure development. “Although it is better than others in the sub-region, I strongly believe it must strive to be in the league of countries in North Africa and South Africa because it used to be well ahead of them.

“It is foolish to try and compare yourself with those people you used to do far better than because you still feel you are ahead of them. Zimbabwe must lead as it always did in the early 1980s. We have bunched ourselves with poor performers and we feel quite okay by staying in this pack,” adds Dr Chirisa.

He further explains: “Transformation in thinking is the recipe of self-introspection which brings an urge on one to say, ‘I must improve’. Zimbabwe needs self-introspection which leads to conviction that ‘pandimire pakaoma’ so I must push ahead than fall or succumb to pressure.

“Remember, necessity is the mother of invention. Until we see the necessity to do things in a better way, we will wallow and sink in our comfort zone which is not even a comfort zone. The transport sector is just but one of many sectors where we need to rethink and redefine our present and the future.”

Town Planner Mr Percy Toriro says the major challenge with Harare’s transport system at the moment is an unsustainable over-reliance on kombis. Use of these, he explains, has multiple problems, the first being congestion.

“Since they carry only 16-18 passengers each, hundreds are needed at peak periods to ferry all commuters.

“The second challenge is one of informality; these are all operated by individuals in a loose manner and therefore are accountable to no one except perhaps the owner”, says Mr Toriro.

Thirdly, he points out and more importantly, this system is environmentally unsustainable as too many engines are running at the same time, thereby burning huge amounts of fuel releasing many tonnes of carbon gases into the air.

The ecological footprint of transport in this country is very high.

Mr Toriro also says another inconveniencing factor about Harare’s public transport is the irregularity in terms of time.

“There are no timetables for buses. One cannot plan to be at a certain point at a certain time,” he adds.

In the eighties, he reminisces, one could wait for a bus to school or to hospital in order to get there at a certain scheduled time. This, he says, is important for planning.

“The current set up is therefore not only chaotic and inconveniencing, but does not encourage people to use public transport.

“In Harare using a private car is not a status issue, but an absolute necessity if one wants to travel in decency,” he adds.

Mr Toriro also suggests that Harare needs a mass transit system that is a combination of big buses and railway.

“There is no city in the world that is as big as Harare that entirely relies on kombis and is efficient. In South Africa next door, Durban, Cape Town, and Jo’burg all have well-developed railway systems complemented by bus systems. Kombis are there as a complementary service and not as the main system,” he points out.

He says there is need for investment in railway and conventional buses if Harare is to have an efficient public transport system.

“The operators may not necessarily be the current NRZ and ZUPCO, but we need similar entities to operate our public transport system. Other major bus operators can be invited to invest in the sector as long as they have resources to bring in large 76-seater plus buses and have experience in running efficient public transport systems,” he suggests.

By comparison, Mr Toriro says, Harare’s public transport system is poor, comparable to equally inefficient systems that one finds in Nairobi.

“We should emulate countries that have not only developed efficient public transport systems such as Brazil, but have actually used transport to stimulate local economic development.

“The city of Curitiba in Brazil managed to develop efficient transport corridors that have linkages to major economic activities thereby stimulating development.

“Today they are not only an example of an efficient public system, but also an energy-efficient one winning several global awards in the process,” he explains.

In addition to all those measures, he states, there is a dire need for significant investment in roads and ancillary public transport infrastructure such as the bus termini and bus stops.

“All these need significant upgrades in order to attract the higher income commuter,” he adds.