Oshodi-Abule Egba BRT Corridor ready in May - Sanwo-Olu

…Lagos Gov: ‘Second Phase Of The Project To Start Immediately’

...Corridor To Open With 200 Buses
AgegePulse Magazine

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has beamed a special focus on the ongoing construction BRT corridor from Oshodi to Abule Egba. The 13.68 kilometre-long route will be completed in May, this year, Sanwo-Olu disclosed while inspecting the project on Sunday.

Construction work has resumed on the project, which was started under the last administration. The project is being handled and supervised by the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA).

Upon completion, Sanwo-Olu said the project was expected to bring relief to residents, as it is expected to ease transportation challenges along the route.

The Governor said over 200 mass transit buses would be deployed to the corridor for immediate operations, pointing out that additional buses would be delivered based on assessment of traffic situation and utilisation.

He said: “This BRT corridor was conceived with the intention to address congestion and transportation challenges along the Oshodi-Abule Egba corridor. We are fully back on this project and we are pushing the contractor to step up the pace of work on it. Once it starts operation, this will significantly bring relief and reduce traffic congestion and transportation problems along this route.

“We are hoping that by the end of May, we should complete the entire Phase 1 of the BRT infrastructure along this route. The work has been pushed up and there entire project is about 75 per cent to completion. The rest of the construction activities to be done include completion of bus shelters, rigid pavements and terminals.”

Sanwo-Olu said the Government had started to address some impediments slowing down the construction work on the path, which, he said, included blocked drainage network along the route. The Governor said desilting of the identified drain channels at Katangowa market would be done to pave the way for completion work on the BRT lane.

The ongoing Phase 1 of the project will have 14 bus stations between Abule Egba and Oshodi. Five of the stations are bilateral, facing both sides of Expressway; nine medium stations. Also, streetlight facilities will be installed on the route in addition to pedestrian bridges being built along the path.

The Governor also said the Government would be acquiring land to build mega bus depots for the BRT vehicles to be deployed to the area.

After the completion of the first phase, Sanwo-Olu disclosed that work would commence on the Phase II of the project, which will stretch from Abule Egba to Sango, later this year.

“The extension of the BRT corridor to Ogun State border is part of the solutions we are bringing to address traffic congestion along Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway and reduce it to the barest minimum. This will create a robust transportation model for our residents living in border towns.”

The Governor warned against indiscriminate dumping of refuse on the BRT corridor, stressing that the Government would not condone one-way driving along the route.

Operator to assemble BRT Buses in Lagos 2019

The operator of Bus Rapid Transit system in Lagos, Primero Transport Services Limited, has said its bus assembly plant being built in the state will begin operation in the second quarter of next year.

The Managing Director of the firm, Mr Fola Tinubu, disclosed this in Lagos on Tuesday.

He also spoke on plans by the firm to phase out manual ticketing and replace it with a card system in the first quarter of 2019.

Tinubu said that Primero had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with one of the biggest bus manufacturers in the world, Yutong, to establish the bus assembly plant in Lagos.

Already, he said that the plant had been set up in Epe and expressed the hope that it would go into mass production of high capacity buses by the second quarter of 2019 when a new BRT corridor being constructed by the Lagos State Government between Oshodi and Abule-Egba would have been completed and allowed to operate.

According to him, the transport firm which started full operation in November 2015, currently has 434 buses conveying 150,000 people daily across major terminals between Ikorodu and Tafawa Balewa Square.

Tinubu said the company planned to increase to 200,000 passengers daily on the Ikorodu/TBS corridor, adding that should Primero win the bid to operate the Abule-Egba/Oshodi corridor, it would deploy additional 350 buses in the route.

He said the organisation hoped to increase its buses to 2,000 with capacity to convey one million passengers daily.

On the plan to completely phase out manual ticketing in the first quarter of 2019, he said all passengers would be compelled to embrace the card system to remove the hassle of queuing to buy tickets.

He called for a conference of all the stakeholders to discuss how to make the public transportation work in Lagos and ensure its viability for investors.

“The discussion must hold if you don’t want the BRT system to collapse like the LSTC and other public transportation arrangements,” he said.

The MD said Primero, 100 per cent privately-owned, had been paying certain percentage of its revenue to the state government giving it the exclusive right to use the dedicated BRT lanes constructed by the government.

Tinubu, however, noted that there had not been any increase in bus fares in the last eight years, despite continuous rise in its operational costs.

“Our biggest challenge is the naira devaluation. We borrow a lot of money in dollars; we import parts in dollars and when the naira nose-dived, our debts doubled and the cost of parts we use has doubled,” he said.

Source: Punch