Lars' Second Impressions: Traffic in Dar

August 27, 2009

When I first came to Dar es Salaam, 41 years ago, it was a city of roughly 300,000 to 350,000 (nobody was quite sure). There were few cars on the roads, and there were only a few ways into and out of the city – I remember the Bagamoyo Road as two lanes, paved part of the way but becoming a track in the sand a few miles outside of town. I lived with some other CUSO volunteers in Kinondoni, which was then on the outskirts of town.

Dar now has 3 million plus inhabitants and it has spread well to the north and west. My office these days is in Regent Estates, which although it is quite close to Kinondoni would now be considered fairly central. Our house is about 8 kilometres further out, in Mbezi Juu. Two nights ago, coming home at 7 PM, it took our cab driver ¾ of an hour to negotiate that distance. Not that he was any sort of slow- poke – he dipped into side streets and rode over curbs, he drove down the access roads when the main lanes were plugged and, when our lane was jammed up and there appeared to be nobody coming in the oncoming lane, he simply pulled out and drove past the stalled traffic, only cutting back into lane when oncoming buses loomed directly in front. It was quite a ride – but it still took ¾ of an hour. The core problem is that the Bagamoyo Road is still only two lanes wide for most of its distance – there is a new section of 4 lanes, but it slims down into two again around Mwenge, and after that the traffic is perennially bumper to bumper. And there must be hundreds of times as many cars on the road now as there were 40 years ago.

Any Canadian or American with even the slightest tendency to road rage would be well advised to leave the driving here to somebody else – but Tanzanians are amazingly good-natured and forbearing in their driving relationships. One may be stalled in lane, and be being passed on both sides by some who drive down the shoulder of the road and some who risk the chance of oncoming traffic, but somehow nobody seems to bear any ill-will towards lane-jumpers – they are allowed to merge back into the traffic flow, without horn blowing or hostility of any kind, whenever they run out of road. Indeed, the general absence of horn blowing is remarkable – a gentle 'bip' from time to time to remind a bicyclist with a huge load of pots of his precarious proximity to the front bumper or to warn off a crowd of pedestrians trying to cross, but nothing more. No horn-blowing as righteous rage (as in North America) and no constant 'drive by horn' tactics (as in China). Tanzanians seem to be able to live and let live on the road, and there is always somebody who will slow a little and let other drivers into traffic.

Of course, none of that implies any great tendency to rules obedience – and polite holding back will get you precisely nowhere. The primary principle of driving here is to occupy space, in the knowledge that other drivers do not want dents in their cars. Getting into the traffic flow requires a persistent jutting forward until somebody accepts that it is easier to let you in, rather than going around you – but somebody always does that, with equanimity, and occasionally courtesy.

In a way, the courtesy of Tanzanians to each other on the road is nice indication of some sort of underlying 'social capital' but the social problem in Tanzania's road congestion is the enormous waste it represents. Our next door neighbour works in the central business district and drives the 20 kilometres in and out every day – it takes him 1 ½ hours each way, every working day. The cost of his time, the gasoline that he burns every day sitting in traffic and the capital that is tied up in the many thousands of private cars which spend much of their operational lives bumper to bumper with other jammed vehicles – it's all a huge waste for a poor country (as well as being environmentally disastrous).

A remarkable number of Tanzanians have been able to buy personal automobiles – but they are still the upper-middle class. The standard method of car-buying is to purchase a second-hand car from Japan (as we have done), since the Japanese have well-maintained vehicles, turn them over frequently and ship them to East Africa after a government inspection.

But even if the cash cost of second-hand vehicles compares well with Canadian prices and the cost of gasoline is about the same, this is still far beyond the means of most Tanzanians. Most people walk or get around using the network of small vans and buses called 'dalla- dallas'. With a basic fare of 400 T shillings (about 40 cents Cdn) they have a local reputation for crazy risk taking since each driver wants to get ahead of other buses on his route, so as to scoop up the passengers waiting by the road side. Jammed to the gills and belching smoke, they push their way into, around and out of the traffic flow.
If there is a hope for Dar es Salaam as a city, it lies in the fact that somehow, along two lane roads like the Bagamoyo Road, the municipality has been able to keep a wide road allowance free from construction. If the authorities eventually decide to go just for more lanes, I guess Dar will be headed down the dead end of ever greater dependence on the private automobile. In my view, this would be hugely expensive for the country, since the Dar es Salaam economy is a major driver of growth, and it is not in the national interest for the major urban area to choke on its own traffic congestion. But if the road allowance space was used to provide dedicated bus lanes – one going in each direction, with pull-offs at each bus stop – the dalla-dallas could pick up and drop off and go directly into town and escape the congestion of the main roadway. Public transit would be a faster alternative than the private car and would become an even more competitive transit mode to the private car. It might then be politically feasible for government to tax gasoline and imported vehicles more heavily, since the middle class would have an option to the car. Those of the elite who might not want to share their seats with sweaty companions would tend to stay in their private vehicles but the rampant capitalism of the country could certainly supply a network of VIP buses (air-conditioned, no standing, premium prices) to run along the same routes as the current dalla-dallas, and VIP buses might tempt even the fussiest commuter.
But so far all that speculation is really just the dreaming that one does while stuck in traffic. For the next eight months it's easy to predict that while we are in Dar, traffic and getting around will pre- occupy much of our day to day life.