In its 2010 report on Africa’s growth the United Nations agency for human settlements, UN Habitat, has stated that Lagos will have a population of 37.7 million by 2050, making it the most populous city in Africa. While Landlords and Landladies will dance to this numbers, the truth is, it’s bad for all of us for a simple reason; traffic. Lagos at 17m people is already CLOSED. Yes, that’s the new term for hyper-congestion. Anything from 5am to 8am, 5pm to 8pm, Monday to Friday is a “no no”. You don’t want to be in Lagos during this period. That is almost 50% of the working time of the week. At 40 million people we will be on track to overtake China in traffic jam records.
So what is the way forward? Ride sharing, Uber.
Uber Technologies Inc. is an American international transportation network company headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company develops, markets and operates the Uber mobile app, which allows consumers with smartphones to submit a trip request which is then routed to Uber drivers who use their own cars. Uber gives high quality service, fair pricing system, convenience, and is easy to use and understand. Uber is also good for the environment (less pollution).
So before you buy that ride you have been dreaming about, think about Lagos traffic, because ridesharing will save us all. (Details on how to join the movement on my blog)
Mind, the Uber service aint primarily ride share. (Uberpool is.)
Uber is an on demand taxi/ride hailing service, not even ‘thirdmost’ a ride sharing service.
However that doesn’t take away from your point, though; Lagos is getting congested (CLOSED) and will get worse. True.
Am all for Startups saving the day and more but it isn’t always that neat.
Barring our lazy government( those guys need disruption in their bloody skulls), better urban planning and road network will work better.
Judging from what we already see at work, i wager Eko Atlantic city will eat up a chunk of the rising tide, the rail way distribution btw Lagos & Badagry will further push the burgeoning population along that corridor. Epe is already eating up all the bodies Lekki is throwing at it; pushing from Ajah.
New businesses will also spread along these axis due to congestion at the center.
By and large, the economics involved in 2050, will have a way of creating balance, howbeit only manageable.
Interesting thought Chuks, but Uber is a ride sharing service. In fact Uber is synonymous with ride sharing. I am an Uber driver and I drive on the platform sometimes–by sharing my ride.
The market is much much bigger than the Uber’s target market. In Nigeria Uber is targeting the young person who earns above about $1000 monthly. And how many people in Lagos is that? 1 or 2m? What about the 90%? The girl who earns N50k a month and will still save to buy a N450k car? The more the cars, the more the congestion. Most of our local small startups are not going after the right market, don’t have the right solution and or marketing budget. I will write a subsequent post on the full opportunity and how local startups can take it. We must encourage competition and be loyal to only quality service and products.
BTW I have no promotional affiliation with Uber, just using the service. Uber did not asked me to post this, I run a service on ride sharing services like Uber
There are several things that can be done about congestion. And mind that traffic is not the biggest problem where congestion is concerned (Figure this with your imagination).
There are several ways this can go, and ride sharing is just one of many ways
Better transportation systems;
Quality road construction. More important, is the maintenance of said roads;
Reduced air fares because of the economies of scale. The more people, the merrier for the aviation industry, the quicker they can drop their prices (Through regulation or through common business sense) The other day, I found that a flight ticket from Texas to Chicago costs less than a bus ride to same destination. (De-congest the roads)
Metro stations? Trains? Anyone heard of them?
Errr. Or just plain de-congest Lagos. What happened to the rest of the Land in the country? Is it compulsory to have urban migration strictly limited to Lagos and Abuja (and the other limited number of urban lands in the country)?
I hope you see why we shouldn’t yet take ride sharing all that seriously for the reason of “Closure”.
Well, you can define ride sharing in many ways. But going by how you have defined it, Uber is still a ride sharing service. Uber has a functionality called ‘Fare Split’ that helps you share your Uber ride with friends.
It is true there are many problems that urbanization brings; lack of jobs, air pollution, anti-biodiversity, disease, crime, but I think transportation for us is unique because we (Lagos) are not even in the top 30 most population dense cities in the world, but we are however suffering significantly more than some of these other cites. So relative to the top 30, things should not be so bad. Of course a lot of factors come into play like proper planning, improved the public transport, both in terms of quality and frequency of service, road parking, speed limits enforcement, designating lanes for slow moving traffic, good footpaths, ensuring that the civic authorities and elected representatives travel by public transport etc. and all the stuff we have been trying to do since our independence.
But this post is mostly about what we can do now, what we can do with technology, and what else we can do.
Ride sharing to me is when you don’t have precise control over destination. The driver does. You go as far as you need to and get down where your objective diverges from the driver’s.
For example car pooling.
You and your friend work in yaba. Your friend works in an incubator and you work out of cc hub. You get a ride with your friend and get out in front of cc hub or as close to it as you can.
That’s ride sharing.
A bus is ride sharing because the driver tells you where he’s going and you join him. Same as keke.
The uber driver doesn’t have control over the destination. You call it. He goes.
That’s a taxi.
Even if you have friends with you in the uber splitting the bill, you all call the destination, not the driver.
I don’t know what part of my reply you were addressing there.
However, i’d say there is that part of it all, where Uber and its successful services could actually alter one’s buying decision but not as you put it.
A person’s decision to buy a car, may be as much for luxury as it is for plain simple USE.
The cross between buying a car for both use and show-off (A very Nigerian factor) could make for an expensive car choice.
Hence the ‘hypothesis’ that anyone, could in such a ‘fix’, decide to dump cash for just that simple automobile for moving around to save cash. And use Uber for the occasional step up appearances.
A very likely possibility.
That doesn’t mean much to people unless its is enforced.
China has repeatedly enforced it’s No-driving day in major cities to save people from choking on Fog waste.
I totally understand you. I’m trying to say that there are other things that can be done, and we don’t always need a new system. The old system can just be re-thought and improved. I’ll always say that I speak for people who live exactly like I do.
We need to analyse what makes car-sharing as a business tick. By that, I’m speaking of why it’s a NEED. Let’s specifically use Uber in the USA. This works efficiently because of the way the economy is structured. Mass public transportation is strictly inter- and intra-city and you’ll never find them remotely close to residential areas and business districts. They have no “Danfos”, “Kekes” and “Okadas”. So you NEED to use some form of private transportation to move about if you have to get to where you NEED to get to. Hence, Taxis and ride sharing. It’s a need because, you’ll walk kilometres otherwise.
I only drive when I need to. I learnt that from my 54-year old mother. I love public transportation here in Nigeria because (believe it or not), it’s pretty convenient (No police wahala, jump off a bus if there’s traffic and hop on a bike… among others). I’ve never bothered about an Uber ride because I already have public transportation that can take me from my doorstep to whatever destination I need without producing an extra CO molecule. (Which to me is better than the basic point of tech-ride-sharing). Technically, as @akamaozu brilliantly inferred,
I think this is what it’ll metamorphise to in the end.
My perception makes me believe that Uber will put even more cars on the roads, especially if people start to rely on it for a living, which is a possibility in itself.
It might just be efficient in a different demography (Well, mostly the Islands), but as I said, I speak for myself and people that see the world from my point of view.
Lest I forget your initial point on “What can be done now”, I think sensitizing more people to use more public transportation will do even more short-term and long-term good than the Uber. I’m just saying.
My opinion remains subject to criticism, review, and probably, change.
If you try moving around VI without a car, you will find that you almost always have to go back to Obalende; very inefficient. Also who says public transport cant be Uberized? Úberization is the process of optimizing how people get around by building efficiency in how drivers find passengers and in how passengers find drivers, and pay them. Uber doesn’t only work for places where there is public transport, it also works for places where the public transport routes are not optimal (whether by time or route). Also ride-sharing as a solution to congested cities, means that fewer people will own cars and more people will share; whether at the same time or not e.g. Four people can go to work together–in one car, also four people can go to work at different times using the same car. In both instances, it means less cars on the road.
Ride-sharing should not be defined by whether you can determine the final destination of the car or not. Ride-sharing should only be defined by whether a ride is shared or not, at the same time or not. Ride-sharing is about sharing a ride whether it is owned by you or not, irrespective of whether you can determine the final destination or not, or how the fare is shared. It is simply about sharing a ride.
Taking a bus is also ride sharing, using a train is as well. If everyone took a train or bus, will it put more cars on the roads? We have more cars on the roads when the father of the house has a ride, the mother has one, the daughter who works for Techcabal has one, the children have one and there is one truck for family outings. We don’t have more cars on road when everyone shares.
Sensitizing more people to use public transport will help a lot, especially since using public transport is ride sharing. But the take away from Uber is the optimization. A lot of traffic prone routes are traffic prone because bus drivers are trying to pickup passengers. Imagine if picking up passengers was not a random event in this country? Imagine if it doesn’t also have to be scheduled? Imagine if it can still be done at peoples convenience? Imagine if we can forecast it with an accuracy of more than 70%? Won’t we use less rides? That is the opportunity; organizing the madness–the demand.
So before you buy that ride you have been dreaming about, think about Lagos traffic, because ride-sharing will save us all.
It seems like you’re using ride and car interchangeably, which explains why your definition of ride sharing is very different from mine.
A ride is a single trip in a car.
If 4 people take 4 different cars from point A to B, then hand over the cars to 4 different people to drive to point C, there is still one car on the road per person making a trip.
Ride sharing is the first 4 riding together from A to B and handing it over to the next 4 to go from B to C. They shared a ride, so there wasn’t a need for a car per person.
You can share a car without ride sharing. That’s typically the default. A family shares a car, but they usually ride alone. A parent goes to work alone. The teenage son drives the car to the movies.
In the early 2010s, several technology companies introduced apps that were advertised as ridesharing, but in fact dispatched commercial operators similar to a taxi service. Transportation experts have called these services “ridesourcing” to clarify that drivers do not share a destination with their passengers; the app simply outsources rides to commercial drivers. Examples of these “ridesourcing” companies are FillCar, Uber, Lyft and Haxi.
