SOLUTION IN SIGHT FOR PASSENGER TRANSPORT - MINISTER

Mozambique’s Minister of Transport, Paulo Zucula, has guaranteed that the crisis of passenger transport in Maputo, characterised by huge queues at the city’s bus stop during the rush hours, will soon be solved.To this end, 50 new buses for private operators are already in Maputo, and the only hold-up remaining is to conclude negotiations with the banks about how they will be paid for. The import procedures began in mid-2010, but were delayed due to problems with exempting the vehicles from import duties.“The private operators made a mistake because they requested the exemption when the buses were already in Maputo”, Zucula told reporters. “The exemption procedure should have begun while the buses were being imported”.He added that the government has ordered a shipment of buses from China that should soon arrive in Maputo to strengthen the current fleet of the publicly-owned bus company, TPM.This is in addition to a further shipment of 150 buses from the Indian company Tata, which will arrive in the next four to five months.Zucula recognised that the new buses will not definitively solve the problem, since traffic in Maputo, particularly on the main routes in and out of the city, is also severely delayed by rush hour traffic jams. “We must be very creative in finding a way to minimise the problem”, said Zucula, who raised the hypothesis of introducing road traffic innovations, particularly during peak traffic times, in order to cope with congestion and speed up the flow of traffic.Under current conditions, the Minister added, congestion is so bad that a bus can take one, or even two, hours to travel a distance which under normal circumstances would take 20 minutes. One of the results of this crawl through the traffic is the build-up of long queues at the bus stops. Among the measures under consideration, said Zucula, was the introduction of bus lanes, and an extension of the current one-way system. Thus two main thoroughfares that run parallel through central Maputo, 24th July Avenue and Eduardo Mondlane Avenue, could become one way streets, with traffic flowing in opposite directions during the morning rush hour of 06.00 to 08.00. Such measures, he believed, could reduce congestion by more than 50 per cent. These were not measures that could be introduced from one day to the next, he added. It was necessary to take precautions and analyse all the consequences, so that the new measures did not increase the number of traffic accidents in the city.Other measures suggested include setting up a coordination office to manage the TPM fleet during the rush hours, sending the buses where needed, depending on the concentrations of passengers. Once traffic flow was back to normal, the buses would resume their normal routes.“Obviously this doesn’t solve the problem”, said Zucula, “but it reduces the waiting time at the bus stops”.The government also intends to acquire articulated buses which can hold up to 170 passengers. “Articulated buses are very good at peak times, given the number of people they can hold”, said the Minister. “But after the rush hour they become inefficient, because they circulate almost empty’.One of the major challenges is financial, with the government facing difficulties paying to maintain and expand the TPM fleet. The company runs at a loss, and so its survival depends on funds granted from the state budget.Zucula pointed out Mozambique is far from the only country that subsidises urban passenger transport. This is a situation common to most countries, in both the developed and the developing world. To eliminate the TPM subsidy, Zucula said, would imply a flat rate fare of 25 meticais (about 77 US cents) per journey. The current fare is just five meticais.Doubtless the government is well aware that fare rises can spark off serious disturbances. An attempt in February 2008 to raise the fares charged by the privately owned minibuses that still provide much of the city’s passenger transport led to serious rioting in the streets of Maputo, and the far rise was quickly reversed.