INFLUENCE OF CAR DEPENDENCY ON SUSTAINABLE URBAN MOBILITY IN NIGERIA.

The pursuit of Sustainable Mobility is one of the greatest environmental challenges nowadays. Despite people becoming more aware of the urgency and need of climate action, the personal value of car ownership remains high and even increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. While several cities in the developed world have taken steps to support sustainable development goals by providing and improving sustainable mobilities, it cannot be said for Nigeria despite several measures by the governments to discourage it’s ownership and usage.

Factors influencing car dependency
Although, one of the major factor that may contribute to the problem of high car dependency in Nigeria is the rising level of insecurity, as traveling in a car may now appear to be safer than public transport whose services are inadequate and mostly with reduced accessibility in some areas thereby making the current transportation system to be described as unsustainable. Other factors include: increased level of income, age, gender, status, aspiration, comfort, independency, etc.

Implications of Car – Dependency on Sustainable Mobility
The Rapid growth in vehicle ownership has significant implications for sustainable urban mobility and the livability of the environment. This growth however, threatens the sustainability of the existing road transport system leading to severe traffic congestion, a high rate of road traffic, accidents, air pollution, determination of the roadway system and excessive fuel demand. These externalities cause climate change and leads to serious health problems and also affect the economy and society in the form of high logistic cost and reduced logistic reliability.

Sustainable Mobility Challenges
Despite the Federal Government of Nigeria’s several measures and policies to reduce car ownership such as the vehicle restraint regulation in 1977 and others, the rate of car ownership is still increasing which further exerts increasing pressure on the already inadequate public transport facilities. However, the modal shift from car use to public transport will remain quite challenging due to an absence of affordable, efficient, reliable, safe and highly connected public transport system.

The greatest challenge is how all the major stakeholders, including transport planners, researchers, and policy makers in Nigeria will surmount this array of problems in order to reduce car dependency and meet the rising demand for urban passenger travel and freight movement in an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable manner. Achieving a sustainable transportation system can be a complicated task that requires a short, intermediate and long term planning.

Recommendations:

Campaigns can be organized to create awareness and enlighten the public on the need for sustainability.

The government needs to formulate a sound transport policy geared towards the development of sustainable transport system.

Ensuring continuous monitoring and control of available sustainable transport infrastructures while generating or sourcing for funds to provide more adequate sustainable transport infrastructures.

All these would lead to the encouragement of the use of public transport system while influencing the usage level of cars by commuters.

Excerpts from:
Adebayo, I.T., Ajayi, J.O., & Wojuade, C.A. “INFLUENCE OF CAR DEPENDENCY ON SUSTAINABLE URBAN MOBILITY IN NIGERIA” Book of Proceedings, CILT Conference, 2022.

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