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By Fidelis Ugbomeh
Need to take a critical look at current reliance on roads for evacuation of 90% freight compared to 1% recorded through rail mode formed part of consensus reached at the end of 2006 Annual Global Transport Policy (GTP) Roundtable held recently in Lagos.
Participants at the Global Transport Policy roundtable agreed that near total reliance on road mode has to be tilted through unhindered rail access for long-distance evacuation of freight on narrow and standard gauge corridors from Lagos to the hinterland.
They noted that reliance on road has led to inefficiency, gridlocks, increasing cost of freight due to roads easily damaged by trucks loaded with bulky goods that ply them on long distance trips daily, coupled with poor maintenance culture.
It was also resolved that the National Assembly should enact a law that makes it mandatory for stipulated tonnage of goods to be moved by rail, especially over long distances.
The communique noted that railway lines should be linked to strategic seaport and airport terminals from where containers and cargoes can be distributed by trucks to their various destinations.
While acknowledging that integrated corridors reduce travel time, participants agreed that rail is cheaper, faster and safer, with capacity for higher volumes of traffic in bulk.
All the transport modes, including rail, according to the communique, account for 28% of Nigeria’s carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion, and efforts should be geared towards reliance on fuel/diesel to power mobility.
It was observed that there is skills gap in the ecosystem, hence, operators rely on experience, not training and retraining, to expose workers to modernised transport and logistics.
They called for a transport policy that will regulate entry and exit in and out of the profession, even as they said transport should be professionalised.
The GTP harped on use of technology to improve how people are moved and meed to develop career path for students wishing to build a career in multimodalism.
