Following the heavy traffic being witnessed along the major roads leading to the ports in Lagos, many commuters had resorted to water transportation as a viable alternative to roads in their bid to access the ports, transact their businesses and depart for their various homes on time.
Investigations by Primetime Reporters revealed that commuters now spend between two to three hours on the roads, a development respondents said was not healthy for their businesses as a lot of man-hours are lost while on traffic.
It was also gathered that commuters traveled as far as Ikotun, Mile 2, Surulere, Ikorodu and other far ends of Lagos state to Marina Jetty on the Island where they board ferry for onward movement to Apapa at a more reasonable time.
This development according to findings has led to increase in the volume of traffic on the Marina-Apapa route as well as Marina-Tincan Island route thereby leading to passengers queuing up on lines to wait for their turns as only two ferries shuttles between Marina and Apapa as at the time of Filing this report.
Despite the large number of passengers at besieging the jetty on daily basis, ferry fares remained constant as confirmed by some respondents who spoke to Primetime Reporters.
Respondents who spoke to Primetime Reporters attributed the development to the poor state of the roads especially that between Mile 2 and Tincan Island ports and the one between Ijora and Apapa as well as the menace of the tanker drivers who occupied almost all the roads while waiting for their consignments.
On his part, one of the passengers, Mr. Oye Obadiah blamed the situation on bad roads and the activities of truck drivers which made the roads inaccessible thus leading to wasting of man-hours which in turn amounts to huge economic loss to the nation.
Obadiah while admitting that himself was a regular user of the waterways said that the surge at the jetty may not be unconnected with the traffic witnessed on the roads in recent time even as he confirmed that the operators of the jetty had not jerked up their prices.
According to him, “ it is the bad roads at Tincan Island which made the roads impassable for commuters, which led the truck drivers to divert to Ijora which made the traffic on that road so heavy that traffic jam-packed on the road thereby causing traffic gridlock”.
“The bad roads and the menace of truck drivers all combined together to cause the traffic that we are experiencing now”.
Also speaking, Mr. Mark Fidelis Ikenga stated that the surge at the jetty though not strange since water transport was another means of transportation attributed the development to traffic situation in Lagos state.
According to him, the development has called to question about how ready the government and its agency to meet up with the challenges of the increased patronage to water transport as he want the Lagos state government as well as the federal government to open up the sector for private operators to come in.
“As it is now, I think what the state government not the federal government now need to do is to improve on their services, procure more boats like the state government has just one ferry and this is private”.
“If the state government can open up here instead of monopolizing this place, they should open it up to the private sector the way they did in Ikorodu route because right now in Ikorodu route, you have a lot of private individuals who have boats and make things easier unlike before”.
On what should be done to ease the traffic on the roads, he urged the government to provide good roads, reconstruct the damage portions of the roads in Lagos as well as open new channels and rail lines to complement the roads.
While commending the Lagos state government for constructing more BRT routes in the state, he called for more of those buses to be procured as well as expand its facilities.
“Also they should check the activities of the Danfo drivers because most of the obstruction we notice on the roads are caused bu them. LASTMA officials who are supposed to ensure free flow of traffic are now doing what the police people were doing before, stay at one place and allow one or two agberos to bring money for them”.
