The Present Traffic Condition and the Future Direction in the city of Abuja. AKINMADE. O.D1. 1.

Research Officer Nigeria Building and Road Re search Institute Abuja ABSTRACT: Abuja region in Nigeria has started facing serious traffic congestion especially during peak hours in the central business district ,virtual all activ ities is been done in the Central Business District Area and due to lack of ade quate transportation facilities and intermodal transportation ,personal vehicle s is on the increase. This is an indication of transport problems, most motorist spend at least 2 hours to enter the CBD and at least another 2hrs to leave the CBD on a journey of 15mins .This monograph is part of the ongoing research proje ct to analyze the traffic situation in Abuja metropolis and it introduces the tr affic situation in Abuja metropolis and analyzes the cause and possible remedies .The causes of traffic congestion are classified into three component. Driver a nd commuter Behavioral problems, problems in the transport system and problem in social system. The countermeasures are classified into three categories. The im provement traffic regulation, improvement of infrastructure and control and user s education. It was found that in the long run government has to construct more transport infrastructures, diversify the transport sector by constructing altern atives means of mobility to road but on the other hand there exists methodology or ideas to improve traffic situation in the short term.

Key words: Abuja Nigeria, traffic congestion, drivers behavior, transport infras tructure

1. INTRODUCTION Urban settlements with population over 1 million people are usually called megal opolises. Usually, megalopolises are administrative centers, major national and regional industrial, financial, cultural centers, and cities with the highest li ving standards. One of the main challenges under development of megalopolises is how to maintain the transport system under the growing motorization, that is to say, the process of uncontrolled growth of private cars. Initial motorization s tages showed mainly positive aspects: time saving, significant increase in trans port accessibility and mobility, regular and accurate delivery of passengers and cargo, growing trip comfort and so forth. However, after reaching a certain mot orization level, the negative consequences have started appearing more and more intensively: death and injuries due to traffic accidents, traffic congestion, an d difficulty to protect public transport, the pollution of the environment and s o on. Most megalopolises have been facing this situation for a long time, since they found that the complex of transport problems would almost nullify the advan tages of the car use. Global tendencies have become more apparent in Nigeria as well. Private car becomes an integral part of the way of life in Nigeria. It is said that by 2020 as many as five out of ten Nigerian families will use cars. Sh are of private cars in the national transport balance also keeps growing. The si tuation is the most serious in Abuja Capital Territory 1.1 BACKGROUND Abuja is the capital city of Nigeria. It is located in the center of Nigeria, wi thin the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Abuja is a planned city, and was built mainly in the 1980s. It officially became Nigeria's capital on 12 December 1991 , replacing Lagos, which is still the country's most populous city. At the 2006 census, the city of Abuja had a population of 778,567, making it one of the top ten most populous cities in Nigeria and currently the population is above a mill

ion. Abuja's geography is defined by Aso Rock, a 400-metre monolith left by wate r erosion. Abuja is known for being the best purpose-built city in Africa as wel l as being one of the wealthiest and most expensive; however, the population on the semi-developed edges of the city are living in rural areas such as suleja,K aduna road,kwamba,madalla e.t.c in Niger state and karu,masaka,maraba, Nyanyan in Nasarawa,State. However Abuja is composed of Abuja's Central District ,wuse d istrict,Gwarimpa district,Maitama district,Asokoro district,Guzape district,jabi district e.t.c. The road structure of Abuja region is ring and radial. The region is covered with 5 ring highways and 18 main radial highways. Federal highways account for 39,000 km,25,000km for states,129,000km for local government. The annual average daily traffic volume in the advance sections of federal highways is extremely high; so me highways carry more than 60 thousand vehicles a day and there is a highway th at carries more than 130 thousand vehicles a day. With the motorization level of the population living within the Abuja cities being comparable with the Motoriz ation level of most African cities, it is obvious that more automobile roads are necessary in the Federal capital Territory since is still the only means of tra nsport within and around Abuja.

Fig. 1.0 Abuja map Source :Google Earth. 1.2 Traffic Situation in Abuja capital Territory. According to the statistics provided by the federal road safety corps , the sit uation of traffic accident in Abuja region is The number of accidents is now de creasing gradually. Akinmade O.D. et al. (2012) pointed out that the reason for this drastic reducti on in accident rate is due to the implementation of the Federal Road safety poli cies especially in the year 2010.However, still lots of people are killed in acc idents especially in Abuja and its environs which are avoidable and preventable if strict measures are implored. TABLE 1.0 ROAD TRAFFIC CRASH REPORTS STATE FATAL CASES SERIOUS CASES MINOR CASES TOTAL CASES PERSONS KILLED PERSON INJURED TOTAL CASUALTY FCT 2000 94 128 54 276 173 367 540 2001 8 11 12 31 5 28 33 2002 124 316 19 459 263 1248 1511 2003 118 267 50 435 369 1073 1442 2004 101 277 86 464 249 1027 1276 2005 106 224 166 496 236 1096 1332 2006 108 213 32 353 332 1171 1503 2007 24 64 35 123 77 225 302 2008 181 333 176 690 390 1086 1476 2009 21 42 34 95 72 221 293 2010 6 24 4 34 17 109 126 Source:FRSC ROAD TRAFFIC CRASH REPORTS In Abuja City, traffic congestion is a chronic and serious problem as shown in F igure 2. Traffic congestion irritates drivers at a lot of road sections not only in peak hours but also in other periods of time. The most irritative thing is t hat they cannot forecast their travel time once they start driving. It may take two or more hours to travel between sections where you can pass through in 15 mi nutes if there is no congestion. However there has not been a study to estimate the huge loss to the Nigerian economy as a result of this menace. According to T rofimenkos (2006), the annual loss of time was estimated to be 87.5hours per per son and the total monetary annual loss was estimated to be 31.6 billion rubles(a

pprox. 1 billion dollars) in Moscow city.

Figure 2 Traffic Congestion along arterial entering the City(Nyanyan-Mararaba r oad) To improve those situations, it is obvious that more road infrastructure should be constructed in a long run. However, considering the urgency of this problem, it is also nece ssary to apply Countermeasures that is possible to realize in two or three years. This paper di agnoses the Causes of the transport problem and considers realizable countermeasures. Since most of the Causes of traffic accidents are basically included in that of traffic congestion , now the causes of the traffic congestion are going to be discussed here.

3. METHODOLOGY. The paper highlights the issues causing traffic congestion and probably solution s recommended in short term,in doing this we drove round the major arterials, ha d discussion with motorist during the weekdays and the weekend, however question naires was not developed and we only considered visual and on site discussion wi th the motorist and few drivers to actually know the cause and profer solution i n short term. 4. CAUSATIVE FACTORS OF TRAFFIC CONGESTION IN ABUJA CAPITAL The causes of traffic congestion are been classified into three categories: prob lems on drivers Behavior, transport system and societal problems. 4.1 Problems on the Behavioral factors of drivers In general, the driving ethics of Nigerian drivers are not so good and they tend to have a high threshold for violation of traffic law. Above all, the following four points mu st be influential factors. 4.1.1 Surging into Intersections Even when a section just after an intersection is full of traffic and it is obvi ous that a driver will block the intersection if entering into it, a lot of drivers tend not to st op before the intersection but to surge into it (Figure 3). As was expected, they block the in tersection, disturb other traffic flows and produce unnecessary congestion, even when there is a police officer controlling the traffic manual ,private and public buses cal led Araba violates the tafffic law and insurge into the intersections as shown b elow.

Figure 3 Left-turning Vehicles surging into an Intersection Most of the Nigerian Drivers in Nigeria are not good at considering the effect o f their own behavior on others and tend to think go further if there is a space! 4.1.2 Cutting into Line In general drivers in Nigeria tend to cut into line; however some dont even have stop markings on the pavement as shown below. and they often wait in through lan es so as to cut into left or right turn lanes from there. In Nigeria, phases for left-or-right-turning vehicles are often separated from the phase for through t raffic, they may block the through lanes for a long time even when the number of lane is not sufficient. Moreover, in the case of traffic congestion in through traffic, a lot of vehicles going through often wait in the left or right turn la nes to cut into the through lanes and cause unnecessary congestion.

Fig 4.0 Cutting into Line and no stop markings 4.1.3 Running into Narrow Streets or going against traffic. When Drivers experience traffic congestion in an approach, it is typical for d rivers to run into narrow streets to search other routes and this behavior may c ause another traffic congestion in the narrow street.. As a matter of fact, it m ay take more time for those drivers to pass through the narrow streets than to g o straight along the wide congested route . Also due to congestion some drivers during early hours of the day and late evenings tend to drive against traffic due to the fact that road traffic enforcement is virtually not 24hrs 4.1.4 Parking and selling on Besides the Roads In Abuja and its environs drivers do not care about on-street parking because th ere are less parking places than needed and the control of illegal parking is no t tight at all, lots of drivers tend to double park, to park near the bus stops, intersections or where is prone to be a bottleneck ,some parking bays have been turned into permanent parking lots for public buses and taxis(Figure 5).The veh icles searching parking place in slow speed are also problematic. While some of the parking bays have been turned into a market zones . Figure 5 On-street Parking and Double Parking 4.2 Problems in the Transport System Here, I would like to introduce problems in the transport system. 4.2.1 Inadequate Infrastructure and infrastructural decay It should be pointed out first that the rate of road area is still small and not sufficient for present huge traffic demand. Moreover, compared with the number of vehicles on the roads, the amount of parking place is desperately small. The shortage of road infrastructure may naturally cause traffic congestion, and the deficiency of parking places may increase drivers on-street parking.Bad roads are

common features since there are no alternatives to road transport,no maintenanc e adequate and prompt and no proper design and construction.FERMA activities hav e been virtually not been felt in the area of maintain the roads which they have mandate ,however they have been vocal but the effect is not been felt. 4.2.2. Provision of mass transit. The provision of mass transit should be holistic and realistic even with the sub sidy removed from petroleum and the promise by government to provide mass transi t has not really helped the situation ,because people saddled to manage this mas s transit end up turning it to their personal property, treat the public with di sdane,ply any route they like and they dont even have proper timing to know when and where to ply.

4.3 SOCIETIAL PROBLEMS The last point of view is from social system. There are several problems in the social system of Abuja that have serious effects. 4.3.1 Time-Consuming Registration Process of Traffic Accidents According to the traffic law in the Nigeria, when a driver causes an accident, o ne must stop at the point and start the necessary procedure, and basically one m ust not leave the accident scene before the police arrive. This rule can be obse rved in other countries also. However, usually it takes longer time until a poli ce officer reaches the accident location. Usually one must wait for a couple of hours without moving the vehicle from the location. This situation can cause ser ious traffic congestion or block .Although it is also written in the law that on e must try to make a room for other traffic flows, it does not work well in real iality. 4.3.2 Unexpected Roadblocks While a VIP (with or without police escort) passes a road, the police officers a lways block the other traffic by their hands or by controlling all of signal lig hts as red. This treatment can be Understandable from the viewpoint of security. The problem is that in this case no information is usually provided to drivers about how to make a detour, how long the blockage continues and so on. Under thi s situation, drivers cannot make any other behavior than waiting and get irritat ed. It may cause a dangerous situation in terms of traffic safety. These kinds o f road blockage should be minimized in time. 4.3.3 Disabled Vehicles on Roads A lot of vehicles (especially heavy) tend to be break down suddenly and need to stop on the roads. On a road of heavy traffic flow, the decrease of one lane can make a serious traffic capacity decrease and cause congestion .Furthermore, inf ormation about disabled vehicles is seldom provided to drivers and it is hard to know the existence of disabled vehicles in advance. One of the main reasons is that the regular safety inspection of each vehicle is not conducted properly alt hough there is a rule about.

5. Findings and Recommendation. Major problems have already been discussed. It seems to be profound to solve the se Problems. However, there are also some countermeasures that are achievable ea sily. Here are possible countermeasures and basically it is been classified into three categories: improvement and enforcement of traffic regulation, improvement a nd provision of infrastructure and Management of people. 4.1 Improvement and Enforcement of Traffic Regulation

The first category is to improve and enforce traffic Regulation and apply stiffe r penalties for offenders. 4.1.1 To carryout assessment on traffic signal control system It is necessary to review and evaluate the adequacy of split allocation and the legibility of signal phase designing at every intersection. It is not usual in t he world to use frontage roads for left turn (in the right-hand traffic). It see ms to be better to rearrange this left-turn system. Before doing this it is abso lutely necessary to conduct a survey to understand traffic flow at major interse ctions in Abuja because there are less data about it. If possible, it might also useful to introduce real-time signal controlling system by equipping and placin g detectors. With experience in the major developed cities in the world, increas e in enforcement results in high rate of compliance to traffic laws. 4.1.2 To Change the Policy of Left and Right Turn Arrow It is much better to set not only green arrows but also yellow and red arrows so that drivers can easily catch the meaning of the signal 4.1.3 Improvement on Road marking and placement of traffic signs properly. Traffic signs, markings should be done based on what is obtainable in developed countries and based on MUTCD standards.The issue of placing no U turn sign in a place where you have a flare for u turn should be avoided and also in a situati on where we have stop sign at an intersection on a major road and the minor arm has no stop marking which will also confuses the driver is should be avoided. 4.2 Improvement and provision of Infrastructure The second category is to improve the infrastructure. 4.2.1 Parking places should be equipped to meet international standards. First of all, it is urgently necessary to increase parking places gradually in t wo or three years since there are very few in the city and its environs. By cond ucting a survey to comprehend the present parking needs, it is possible to calcu late how many parking spots are required for which part of the city of which Nig eria Building and Road Research Institute can conduct. For its realization, the possible projects should be to allow to park at the places where have already us ed as parking place without permission, to build large structures for parking at bus terminals for Park & Ride promotion.This study should be regular to curb i ssue of overloading of parking bays based on motorization level. Fig. 6. A bus stop sign without a busbay.

3.2.4 To Secure Escape Routes in Emergencies It is better to secure several routes that are usually non-usable but available under the supervision of the police when the main roads are stuck by serious accidents or roadblocks. Spots where drivers can turn around or enter into frontage roads can be consider ed . 4.3.3. provision of traffic lights. Most of the traffic signal lights do not work,not working properly or are not ev en available,hence there is need for government to either bring in private compa nies to manage and provide this traffic lights for proper efficiency and the f unds generated from defaulters at junctions pr intersection culd be used for the ir services and save government of spending money in this araea. 4.3 Management of the people The final category is to properly management of the people. 3.3.1 To Prohibit Parking within 30m from Intersections Especially on two-lane r

oads, traffic capacity is seriously damaged or reduced if there is only one car parking close to an intersection. Hence, the farther a car park from an interse ction, the smaller the effect of the parking car becomes. Therefore, for example , it may be effective if the police or FRSC officer prohibit parking within 30m from intersections. It is also important to reduce signal cycle time of intersec tions so as to control the length of the queue generated in one cycle. 4.3.2 To Clarify Places where Parking is prohibited It is significant to clarify zones where drivers cannot enter if it is obvious t hat they cannot go ahead, such as inside intersections, inflow part of weaving s ections and so on. If the police can control well, it is possible to reduce unne cessary traffic congestion due to the drivers surging behavior. In London, this s ystem has already been implemented as Yellow Box Figure 14). If they stop in these boxes, the police will control immediately. Also cameras should be placed at ev ery junction in other to capture and apprehend violators which in turn would gen erate income to the government coffers in October 2010 it was stated that the so uth London yellow box in battersea generated over 1million pounds and it was nic ked named money box. Figure 7 Yellow Boxes in London 4.3.3 To Establish a Traffic Grid lock Reduction Team It may be effective to establish a Traffic Grid lock Reduction Team that consists of the federal road safety.civil defence,VIO and other private organizations wi th a mission to reduce traffic congestion. The main job is to control on-street parking at vulnerable sections, to restrain drivers from surging into intersecti ons or cutting into line. To avoid bribery, it is better to employ them at a hig h salary. 4.3.4 To Provide Information to Drivers It is important to provide information about traffic situations to drivers by po ssible means as well as ITS technologies. Especially information about unexpected event, such as accidents and roadblocks, is necessary for drivers to think about the alternative routes. 4.3.5 To Speed Up the Registration Process of Traffic Accidents It is inevitable to consider how to speed up the registration process of traffic accidents. Minor accidents should be immediately registered to release the accident cars especial ly if an accident occurs at points where huge traffic congestion is expected, such as at the center of roads or inside intersections. For example, it might be possible that a police o fficer near the accident point should first hurry to the point and take photographs then continu e the remaining procedures at different place. 4.3.6 To Practice a Campaign of Smart Drive and attitudinal change of drivers Even if a lot of above-mentioned countermeasures are put into execution, suffici ent effects cannot be seen without users understanding and changing their own behavior. To pr actice a campaign can be one possible measure to realize it. It might be effective to cre ate a slogan, a mascot and a logotype, and to use them in advertisement on TV, radio, newspapers , Internet and so forth. It is essential to make drivers understand how they are related to present traffic Congestion. Federal Road Safety need to do more in educating drivers, passengers in the need to comply to traffic rules and regulation which inturn will complem ent other measures to have a congestion free city.

Fig 8 A traffic police controlling traffic ,having motorist violating traffic la ws.

5.0 CONCLUSION. In this paper, the traffic situation of Abuja metropolis was introduced especial ly from the viewpoint of traffic congestion, and the main causes and possible co untermeasures were discussed. it was found that in the long run they have to con struct plenty of infrastructures but on the other hand there exist plenty of dev ices or ideas to improve traffic situation in short term. Other than traffic congestion, there are still problems in logistics, public tra nsport services, ITS realization and so on. It is safe to say that there will be a lot of research topics in Abuja Territory from now on. Transport systems is o bvious among the factor that contributes immensely to the detoriation of the qua lity of life and safety in metropolis and the urban transport situation in Abuja and its environs is deteriorating especially in the city center and the major l inkage to the city where there is an excessive concentration of vehicles. Commut ers in adjoining cities are faced with acute road congestion, rising air polluti on, and high level of accident risk. These problems cannot be eradicated without a concise and pragmatic urban transport strategy. The main objective of such a strategy should be to give provision and enhance high-quality links for people b y improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the city transport systems. Poli cy should be enacted in such a way to reduce personalized modes and boost public transport system. At the same time demand side as well as supply-side management measures should effectively be put in place. Finally people should be encoura ged to use cycle, walk and government should provide enabling environment for c ycling, waking and also empower local urban authorities to raise finance and coo rdinate the activities of various agencies involved in the provision of transpor t infrastructure in urban areas.The Ministry of Transport and other relevant ag encies like Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute should be empowered t o coordinate public transport in the area of project implementation and research respectively Nigeria Building and Road Research Institute should also look int o the estimation of the cost of traffic congestion to the economy and a cost-ben efit analyses should be carried out also.

6.0 REFERENCES 1. Akinmade .O.D. et.al. 2012 .Causes of road traffic crash in Nigeria.(unpubli shed) 2. Federal Road Safety Corps 2010 Annual Report. 3. Kiichiro HATOYAMA 2005 The present traffic condition and future direction of Moscow metropolis. Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation St udies, Vol.8, 2011. 4. LU Huapu Urban Transportation in china :Current state of reform and future t rends.journeys 2009. 5. Sanjay K. Singh 2005 review of urban Transportation in india.journal of pub lic transportation,vol.8.no.1(79-97) 6. The Nigeria Bureau of Statistics 2010Annual Report.

Akinmade Oluwatosin Daniel is a resourceful and result-oriented individual who aims at utilizing his potentials optimally to achieve desired organizational ai ms, objective and goals in a highly competitive, challenging and in high- pressu re work environment, born on the 8 August, 1983, single. A citizen of Nigerian from Ondo state.Had his bachelors in civil engineering in 2008 from Federal Univ ersity of Technology, Minna, Niger State.He proceeded to the prestigious Univers iti Teknologi Malaysia in 2011 where he had his masters degree in highway and tr ansportation.My interest is road safety Engineering, pavement materials analysis , traffic engineering. Currently a research officer in the Nigerian Building an d Road Research institute Abuja .I love Reading ,Travelling and meeting new frie nds.