[sustran] UK Guardian: How Lagos hopes a railway will end daily endurance test and change lives

[Todd Edelman]

How Lagos hopes a railway will end daily endurance test and change lives -
In the second part of a series on Nigeria, David Smith talks to an 
investor aiming to transform commuting in its largest city

David Smith in Lagos
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 January 2011 19.02 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/14/lagos-railway-change-lives-nigeria

When Danladi Verheijen has to attend an important meeting, he doesn't 
know whether getting there will take 10 minutes or three hours. "You're 
going to upset someone," he says. "You're going to arrive very early or 
very late. It leads to massive loss of productivity."

Verheijen works in Lagos, one of the world's fastest growing megacities 
– and one of the most congested. The simplest journey here can be a 
trial of will. Such is the snail's pace of morning traffic that hawkers 
patrol the queues selling socks and phone chargers, McVitie's digestives 
and shaving kits.

But Verheijen believes he can do something to break the deadlock. The 
34-year-old venture capitalist is leading a group of investors in 
Lagos's first city railway. He believes the multibillion-dollar project 
could transform daily life for millions of people in this uniquely 
challenging metropolis, and potentially expand west from Nigeria to Ghana.

"I think it will dramatically change the face of Lagos," he said. "One 
of the lines is in an area people come to in the middle of Lagos island 
to work. To get to work at 8am, they probably have to leave their house 
right now about 5.30am or 5.45am. When our trains start working, they 
can probably leave their home at 7.25am. It's a difference of two hours. 
If you're saving between two and four hours a day, it's a dramatic effect.

"It's cheaper than the alternative, it's faster, it's safer, it's more 
reliable, it's more environmentally friendly. So it's very exciting."

Many railways laid during Africa's colonial era have decayed due to 
neglect, leaving Cecil John Rhodes's Cape-to-Cairo fantasy more remote 
than ever. In large parts of Nigeria, overgrown tracks and abandoned 
stations testify to the triumph of cars and planes.

But Lagos is badly in need of mass public transport beyond its recently 
introduced bus rapid transit system. Nigeria's commercial capital, built 
on a swamp and a series of islands, will overtake Cairo as Africa's 
biggest city in the next five years with a population of 12.4 million, 
according to the UN.

Urban expansion is one of the biggest challenges facing Africa as people 
migrate from rural areas in search of a better life. With its cities set 
to triple in size over the next 40 years, overcrowded slums, choked 
roads and pollution are already big problems.

It is hoped that a rail renaissance can be part of the solution. Last 
year, South Africa launched the R24bn (£2.17bn) Gautrain, linking 
Johannesburg to its international airport at speeds of up to 100mph, 
with further expansion to include the administrative capital, Pretoria, 
a notoriously busy route for motorists.

Lagos's EkoRail – Eko means Lagos in the Yoruba language – is the 
biggest public-private partnership in Lagos state and will eventually 
comprise seven railway lines, each costing more than $1bn (£630m). Two 
lines are already well advanced. The red will run north to south from 
Lagos island to Agbado through 13 stations. The blue will run 17 miles 
from the island to Okokomaiko in the middle of an expanded motorway.

It is hoped the lines will carry 1.4 million passengers per day. They 
will be powered by electricity rather than diesel but, with the national 
grid notoriously unreliable, EkoRail is building its own 30-40 MW power 
station, with excess power benefiting the motorway and local 
communities. The trains could begin test runs late next year.

Reflecting a growing trend in Africa, the project's infrastructure is 
being built by a Chinese contractor. Verheijen said: "They're much more 
competitive and aggressive about doing business. They're working 
Saturdays, they're working Sundays, they're working at nights. They come 
here and have big housing estates for their staff and just seem to work 
like armies. It's very focused and things go up very quickly."

Asked who was benefiting from the construction jobs, he said: "A lot of 
Chinese, some Nigerians as well. I'm not averse to that.

"We need infrastructure. We need toll roads, we need airports, we need 
rail, we need water transportation systems, we need power. That just 
allows entrepreneurs to take off from there."

Verheijen said the first goal was to silence the sceptics and show that 
rail transport was a viable option. But then, encouraged by wider signs 
of recovery in the national railway sector, he has ambitions to go 
further in Nigeria and beyond.

"The blue line goes to Badagry [west of Lagos]. It just makes sense to 
take that on to Togo and to Ghana. It will create trade and move people 
and also goods across west Africa. It probably sounds ludicrous, it 
might not even work, but we need to think about expanding in these ways.

"I understand it costs more money to take a container from Lagos to 
Abuja [the Nigerian capital] than it does to ship one from China to 
Lagos. Unbelievable. Rail, hopefully, will change a lot of that."

Verheijen hopes that one day Lagosians will find the railway as 
indispensable as Londoners. "I think as businesses get more competitive, 
people care a lot more about their time. Ten years ago we didn't have 
mobile phones and every time you had a message, you literally had to 
send somebody. We've become a lot more efficient now with the 
proliferation of mobile phones and can't even imagine ourselves living 
in that era. I'm sure rail transportation will be the same here.

"Ten years from now, we will not be able to imagine how we were able to 
slug through traffic every day."

Some veterans of Lagos's go-slow traffic arteries have welcomed the new 
scheme. Tolu Ogunlesi, a journalist and author, would leave home at 
5.45am to reach his office at 8am. "It's not unusual to find Lagosians 
waking at 4am so they can be sure of getting to the office at eight," he 
said. "It's a crazy life.

"I'd definitely use the Lagos rail. I think it's pure insanity for 
anyone to assume that Lagos's traffic problems can be solved without a 
means of moving large numbers of people between the mainland and the 
island with minimum delay outside of the existing road system. And what 
would that be if not a rail system?

"So far the government has tried buses and bus lanes, but clearly 
something more imaginative, and drastic, is required. Imagine what 
London would be without the tube – and Lagos has more people than London."

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

-- 

Todd Edelman
Green Idea Factory,
a member of the OPENbike team

Mobile: ++49(0)162 814 4081

edelman at greenidea.eu
www.greenidea.eu
todd at openbike.se
www.openbike.se

Skype: toddedelman

Urbanstr. 45
10967 Berlin
Germany

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