Project Materials

TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM IN EDO STATE: A CASE STUDY OF UHUNMWONDE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, EDO STATE

Chapter one

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study.

One of the challenges to Nigerian economics and special wellbeing over the last five years has been the continuous fall in the number of transport facilities across the country.

Nigeria is currently facing an impending catastrophe and transportation immobility. The pattern of Nigerian urbanisation has several repercussions for various sections of the country, including influencing where road traffic originates and ends.

These implications are associated with a variety of urban difficulties, including unemployment, housing challenges, environmental degradation, transit issues, and a general lack of infrastructural services.

This study, however, is concerned with urban mobility and its development in the country over the course of at least 45 years. The urban transport system can be divided into two broad categories: intraurban and interurban.

Except for Lagos and Port Harcourt, where the public sector coexists with the private sector, Nigeria’s intra-urban system is primarily owned by the private sector. Until recently, the interurban transport system was entirely controlled by private owners.

Since independence, challenges with urban mobility have grown. This is due to the rapid expansion in urban population, which has not been matched by growth in transport amenities such as road networks, complementary facilities, transport services, and traffic management systems.

Thus, since 1960, urban transportation problems have been identified as inadequate and inefficient services, long wait times at bus stops, environmental pollution, traffic congestion, and poor roads, a lack of vehicles, and the use of motorcycles as a mode of urban passenger transportation.

The aforementioned transport issues have prompted various government-commissioned studies, including Max Lock’s Master Plan for Gombe and Minna; Dar Al-Handasah’s Okene, Gombe, and Offa; and Lea-Deleuw-Osot and Sigmud Grava’s Lagos Metropolis.

According to Ogunsanya (1993), all of these studies were conducted intensively in the country between 1974 and 1978 for the country’s major urban centres. There were also non-commissioned studies in the field of transportation research undertaken by academic staff at universities and polytechnics, as well as students.

According to Ogunsanya (1993), the studies are diverse in nature and multidimensional in concentration, depending on the scholar’s discipline and area of interest.

The nature of Nigeria’s urban public transport difficulties today can best be understood by examining the trend of development since the country’s inception.

This is especially evident in the problems that our transport modes face, such as airways, roads, and waterways, which are all experiencing a number of bottlenecks and a shortage of rolling stock. Transportation and property play an important role in the physical and economic development of towns and cities around the world.

Property and land prices rise faster in locations with developing transport networks than in areas without such upgrades. Housing and land costs are predicted to climb quickly and steadily in cities as transportation improves and economic and population expansion accelerates (Goldberg, 1970).