All policy has its advantages and disadvantages and our perceptions and needs vary which depends on what we take to be advantageous or otherwise.
Since the introduction of the new pump price of N140-N145 per litre traffic situation has reduced drastically in Lagos.
Lagos state which is ever prone to traffic due to the high population with few road networks is presently witnessing her all time low traffic situation after the implementation of the new pump price.
This is not attributed to any strategic input of the state government but the behavioral psychology the pump price has pushed Lagos car owners to.
Lagos car owners now leave their cars at home and join public buses to get to their various places of occupation. This has lead to monumental patronage of public buses.
A typical example is this writer who was spending less than a thousand naira on fuel from Ikorodu to Apapa but now spends about N1, 500 on fuel. A behavioral psychology of dropping his car at home saves him about N700 daily. 2 or 3 more examples are around the readers of this piece in their working environments.
More so, car owners now do a sort of car pooling where colleagues on same route agree to pick each other and jointly fund the cost of fuel or pay the owner of the car some charges. And some car owners pick passengers on the road while going and coming back from office. This has turned most of Lagos car owners to public drivers.
Most cars on Lagos roads now are official cars which are fully maintained by the company or cars belonging to wealthy and people who live above average and people who make money through illegitimate means.
Traffic in Lagos is now as a result of vehicle breakdown, accident, narrow or road compression, road repairs and more importantly obstruction by unorganized “yellow” buses picking and dropping passengers at unapproved bus stop even in the presence of LASTMA officers who unarguably owns some of the buses or get daily settlements from the drivers.
This has also opened up some viable business opportunities and job creation in the transportation industry.
Government and private investors need to leverage on this by providing more conducive buses with double cabin to convey Lagos residents. This will further encourage and improve the behavioral psychology of dropping private cars for public buses and further reduce traffic situation in Lagos.
Written by : Olabode Olajide Olanrewaju, a transport and logistics Professional.
olabodeolajide2010@yahoo.com