Smart Urban Planning: Benchmarking China to Solve Kampala’s Traffic Crisis

by Admin (Posted on January 16, 2025)

By Nnanda Kizito Sseruwagi

It is estimated that 64% of Uganda’s GDP and 75% of total national revenue collection comes from the Kampala Metropolitan area. To maintain and increase this level of productivity, Kampala needs to have a smooth flow of traffic on good roads. As factors currently stand, millions of the country’s most productive population segment lose productive hours of work seated in deadlock traffic in Kampala’s congested, pot-holed, narrow roads.  On average, about 5-6 hours are wasted daily on the road by workers who are bogged down in the morning and evening when they are going to or coming from work. This is even besides counting the physical and mental health costs urban traffic congestion has on people daily.

Some analyses have concluded that Kampala’s problem is not about a lack of financial resources to build the roads, but one of bureaucratic procurement procedures. It is established that in 2016, Uganda received $300 million from African Development Bank to repair and/or reconstruct some of the major roads in Kampala. This was followed by the award of tenders and contracts by Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) in 2020. Those who lost in the awarding process petitioned the PPDA and other agencies to bog down the commencement of works because of the agents involved in the bidding chain who are always calculating for cuts off of the awards. Almost five years later, no serious works have commenced. The little patchwork done to fill a few potholes and clean drainages has been done by the Special Forces Command (SFC) under the direct intervention of Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba. The deleterious effect of these delays is multiplied into not just productivity lost in traffic congestion but also in hefty interests that the government has to keep paying on money it has not even utilised.

My concern is not even about redoing the road network in the entire Kampala Metropolitan Area which definitely must be done at some time if Kampala is to be rescued from being a large slum. I’m concerned rather with making the city workable as is currently – to cut down the traffic on our roads at an affordable cost.

I believe this is possible because of the following reasons.

Kampala traffic does not normally involve long lines of cars congested along roads. Often, you find that the traffic is intense in an area spanning about eight kilometres. Other parts of the roads are normally freely flowing with few cars.

This implies that congestion happens at intersections or what may be called “choke points.” These are points where we have roundabouts such as Wandegeya, Jinja road traffic lights area, Mulago, Bwaise, Busega, Lubigi and other such places. Other choke points are sections where more than two roads meet.

If there was a smooth flow of traffic at these choke points, cars would never be congested for hours on most of Kampala’s roads, even if they remained in their current state of shambolic narrowness.

With a population of 1.4 billion people, and hundreds of millions of people in individual provincial cities, China is a good country to benchmark with in terms of dealing with deadly traffic. The country innovatively improved its traffic problem and now enjoys high productivity from its citizens.

Let us look at China’s most reasonable and sustainable strategies which enabled it to control traffic congestion having undertaken many ineffective measures from which it improved.

China was notorious for deadly urban traffic congestion in cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Shangai and Shenzen.

Like Kampala, China’s cities faced congestion especially at intersections of wider roads, causing excessively long waiting hours at red lights, and general traffic disorder at intersections. This was a major cause of inconvenience.

This, I think, is Kampala’s major traffic problem today, and China offers lessons on overcoming it affordably.

China introduced policies to improve the service level of intersections. This involved building flyovers and pedestrian overpasses, and enhancing the efficiency of road networks and places with high volumes of cars. The goal was to increase the space supply of motor vehicles and expand the capacity of road traffic at choke points to avoid standstill congestion.

Given the fact that Kampala is a small city, with few major roundabouts and intersections, it is possible to invest our meagre resources to concentrate on dissolving traffic at such critical intersections such as Wandegeya traffic lights, Mulago, Busega, Jinja road and other such areas. This would include building pedestrian over-walks like the one at the former clock tower. These would consume pedestrian traffic smoothly and safely, leaving roads for motorists.

The boda boda cyclists would also have to be given special lanes at the points of intersection or be redirected to other roads that bypass the choke point areas. With that, cars would never have to stop at traffic lights and cause hours of congestion on a daily.

Following years of research, China established that the “sparse block collocation” policy is the most sustainable and fundamental congestion control measure. This policy involved the design of walkable streets and pedestrian scale blocks to enhance pedestrian traffic; incorporating pedestrian safety and convenience requirements into architectural design; reducing the demand for motor vehicles by creating bicycle-friendly road networks; increasing the use of public transport by building public transport-oriented streets and communities; advocating mixed land-use patterns to disperse public travel destinations; and establishing public green spaces and services within walking distance of each other. The benefits of instituting this policy were several, including achieving more balanced employment and housing for citizens, shortening commuting distances, and reducing traffic demand in cities. This could be a good policy to benchmark on in future when Uganda has the resources to redesign the greater Kampala area completely, which we must do at some point!

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Development Watch Center.

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