|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
There are very strong indications that the 2019 delivery timeline for the on-going road expansion that provides for the rail mass transit system along the Lagos-Badagry axis, referred as the blue line may no longer be feasible.
Awarded to the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), with advisory services being provided by CPCS Transcom Limited, the blue line project is being financed solely by the Lagos state government.
The slow pace of work on the on-going blue rail project linking Marina and Okokomaiko to meet with the proposed integrated transportation system initiative and the lack of push to deliver it on record time has been described as one of the factors piling up traffic along the corridor which has become a recurring decimal.
Meanwhile, many motorists and other road users have continued to narrate their harrowing experiences of deadly attacks by some criminal elements and destitutes who lay siege at the newly constructed Lagos-Badagry rail terminals.
A visit to the railway terminals reveals the occupants had fixed mosquito nets and curtains at their respective sleeping corners, while clothes were littered all over the floor. Occupants used stones and similar objects to carve out their spaces.
Ijeoma Goldie, a petty trader who hawks mineral drinks and water along the corridor, said she had witnessed a lot of crimes perpetrated by hoodlums using the rail terminal at Mile 2 and Suru-Alaba as their target points.
About two weeks ago during a traffic gridlock, the criminals attacked many vehicles and smashed the windscreen and made away with their belongings.
A Chinese supervisor working for the CCECC at the site who did not give his name said it was not their responsibility to chase away the hoodlums and other occupants of the railway terminals.
According to him, “Our job is to fix the project and getting protected from these people is government’s responsibility. I believe, after completion of the construction, their activities here will be over.”
In April 2008 during the administration of former governor Babatunde Fashola, the Lagos state government approved N70 billion (Out of the estimated N220 billion) for construction of the Okokomaiko-Iddo-Marina Line, with an estimated completion date of 2011.
However, the project has suffered many delays due to funding shortfalls with the completion date being revised to June 2013, then December 2016, then 2017. As at November 2016, only 16 km of the 27 km blue line had been completed.
Comparing the Lagos rail project to similar ones in other parts of Africa shows that Ethiopia managed deliver the first modern light rail project in Sub-Saharan Africa which opened in the capital Addis Ababa in 2015.
Ethiopia’s rail project was delivered on time despite being longer than the Lagos – Badagry rail line currently under construction.
Addis Ababa’s two line 34-kilometre systems was built by the China Railway Engineering Corporation (CREC) and cost $475m, 85 percent of which was covered by China’s Exim bank.
Lagos has a population of about 20 million people, compared to Addis Ababa’s 5 million.
The Ethiopian light rail has a capacity to carry 60,000 passengers a day across the capital of Africa’s second most populous nation.
Ethiopia was able to complete the project despite its $50 billion GDP being about half the Lagos economy.
Lagos currently doesn’t have enough infrastructure to move its teeming population, with choked roads and bridges sometimes leading to 4 hour “go slows” or traffic jams.
Speaking with BusinessDay on telephone, Kola Ojelabi, LAMATA’s head of media and communications, said the project was stopped for almost three years because of various problems of obstruction on the right of way (RoW).
Reacting to the menace of hoodlums living on the rail lines harassing motorists and other road users, he explained that, it is illegal for anybody under any guise to live on the rail tracks, not to talk of turning themselves into criminals and causing a breach to public safety.
According to him, the state government is exploring the option of lighting up the entire stretch or highway and erecting a protective safety fence along the entire Lagos-Badagry rail corridor when completed.
“It is true that we have given different completion dates for the project but one of the challenges that we had was that the train was originally to go to the Iddo Railway Terminus, but the Railway Act did not allow us to do such.’’
“Since we could not take the train station to Iddo, we had to change the alignment, and in changing that, there were a lot of obstructions on the way.’’
Among these challenges was a fertiliser plant around Ijora belonging to the Federal Government. The state government had to negotiate to use the compound, so that it could take away the warehouse and build another warehouse for them.
Moving into the lagoon, there were two major challenges, including the relocation of gas link, a gas pipe underneath the lagoon, which also took some time.
There was the wreckage of a ship that was at the bottom of the lagoon that also had to be removed. These delayed the time line for the delivery of the project, Ojelabi of LAMATA explained.
“From the initial plan of the Lagos State Government, this rail project ought to have been delivered in 2012 or 2013,’’ he said.
Ojelabi explained that LAMATA lost about three years to the recovery of RoW, adding that, the state government had to bear the additional costs, which were not in the initial budget.
This, according to him was to ensure that the structures were solid because rail infrastructure is expected to last a minimum of 100 years.
When completed, the rail project will cover a distance of 27.5 km from Marina to Okokomaiko, with 13 stations and an end-to-end journey time of 35 minutes.
The entire blue line will operate over a secure and exclusive right-of-way, with no level crossings and no uncontrolled access by pedestrians or vehicles.
MIKE OCHONMA
