How Water Can Reduce Traffic Congestion

Number One in the world for congestion during 2024, Lagos’s average commuter was stuck in traffic for approximately 70 minutes each day.

Among 335 cities these were the top 10:

Faced with crippling gridlock, cities like New York have implemented congestion fees. Lagos, though, has a unique solution.

Traffic Congestion in Lagos

Traffic congestion can be insidious. Not only might it eliminate our leisurely breakfast and morning run but it also diminishes work time and increases CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, it is a negative externality that each of us adds to when we suffer from it.

Ranking

Shown by variables that range from commute time to dissatisfaction, Lagos is far worse than the other African cities (Nairobi, Cairo, Pretoria, Cape Town) with the most traffic congestion:

A Solution

Lagos though has an unusual solution to its traffic crisis. Hoping to link road, rail, and water, the city plans a water-based alternative to road transportation. By purchasing 70 electric ferries, upgrading 20 jetties and terminals, and channelizing inland waterways, they hope to triple the number of people using the water rather than a road. Funded by a combination of loans and grants from European and African institutions, they expect the first phase to be completed in 2027.

This video gives a taste of Lagos’s waterways:

Our Bottom Line: A Transportation Infrastructure

Water transport also saved time and money in the United States. Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal connected East and Midwest markets and served as a prototype for copycat waterways. Enabling regional specialization, the canal moved goods among disparate U.S. regions. As the U.S. 19th century version of comparative advantage, it enabled each part of the nation to specialize in what it did best. The Northeast could concentrate on manufacturing, the West could grow farm goods and raise livestock, the South could focus on cotton. Rocky New England farms no longer needed to grow tobacco. People in the South could stop making their own shoes. Easily, quickly, and cheaply, goods and people could move across the nation because of the Erie Canal.

Like the Erie Canal, Lagos’s new ferries and upgraded waterways will become a part of a transportation infrastructure that moves people and goods more cheaply and quickly.

My sources and more: Thanks to the BBC World Business Report podcast for alerting me to Lagos’s ferry project. Then, for more facts about African traffic congestion, Numbeo (a crowd-sourced data base) came in handy (but I could not confirm its accuracy). And finally, econlife took a look at Africa’s transportation infrastructure in this past post through this report.

Please note that one section of “Our Bottom Line” was in a past econlife post.