The reign of the ubiquitous mini buses (popularly called danfo) in Lagos, will soon be over, says Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation, Dr. Dayo Mobereola.
Speaking to Punch newspaper in an interview, Mobereola said the danfo buses have become quite a danger and the causes of bottle-necks across the nation’s commercial capital.
“In most cities of the world, you have the formal and informal transport systems. In India, you have the rail, you have the buses, but you still have the danfo and all of that. In all of Latin America, you have the informal system—informal buses and all of that. What we are trying to do is not to totally eradicate the informal system because they serve a purpose. We can’t do away with it. However, what we have been working on for the past one and a half to two years is to ensure that this informal system is safe for the people of Lagos and is such that it would provide the services that they are actually intended for and not be a disservice.
“Every day, we see the danfo on the road, and the way these people drive, you can say they are unreliable and unsafe to themselves. But they endanger the lives of other road users. We are asking them to come up with a bigger, 30-capacity bus. We have about 4,800 designated bus stops in Lagos now; these buses will drop off and pick up passengers there. They won’t pick up passengers on the road. They won’t stop at the roundabout. They won’t stop on the bridge. They won’t stop in the middle of the road to pick up passengers. That means we are going to train them from the outset”.
The transport commissioner also said the new informal buses will be electronically run with a new color.
“The other area that we are also trying to capture them with is the use of electronic card systems, so that the card can be used on the rail, water transport, buses and these informal system as well. You find out that these informal operators are losing a lot of money. The drivers and the conductors are the ones making the money. We are going to have trackers on them, so we can tell where all the public transport (vehicles) are in Lagos. We are even going to change the colour so that when you see a public vehicle, be it rail, water transport, taxi, formal or informal bus, they all have one colour. There is a colour in mind but it is not yet time to reveal it”, he said.
Mobereola also spoke about sanitizing the BRT, how the first set of BRT buses suffered from poor maintenance and his vision for a better transportation system in Lagos. You can read the entire interview in Punch newspaper.
The post This is why Lagos will soon flush out the danfo buses appeared first on Ekekeee.