See How Oversized Median Strips Are Contributing To Traffic Bottlenecks On Lagos Roads (PHOTOS)

Not too long ago, Governor Ambode gave his approval for the removal of six very wide roundabouts situated on the Lekki-Epe expressway.

The roundabouts were situated at junctions such as Ikate, Chisco, Jakande, Igbo Efon, Chevron and Victoria Garden City (VGC).

 The project was designed to ease vehicular movement along the Lekki-Ajah corridor.

Soon after their removal, the Lagos state government announced that the removal of the 6 roundabouts saved residents and motorists N240 million daily and about N87 billion annually.

According to the state government, “The Lekki-Epe road, as at the time it was reconstructed, was designed to accommodate about 30,000 vehicles per day, but the vehicular movement along the axis had since increased to over 50,000 daily, thus necessitating plans to mitigate the impact on traffic. The traffic situation in the area was further worsened by the delays occasioned by the humongous roundabouts along the corridor with an average size of about 2,800sqm which is four plots of land” he said.

Soon after the removal of the roundabouts, a survey supervised by the Lagos state government revealed that the journey time between Abraham Adesanya and Lekki Admiralty Tollgate reduced drastically from 2hours to about 36minutes.

This reduction in travel time thus saved Lekki –Ajah residents (with 60,487 average daily traffic) about N240 million daily and N87 billion yearly based on journey time and fuel savings analysis” the report said.

Now, with this experience, is it equally important that another similar factor that contributes to traffic bottlenecks on Lagos roads be visited.  This factor is the presence of oversized median strips on the roads.

Going about the city, there are some economically crucial roads that features very wide median strips. Indeed, some of them add to the aesthetics of the roads.

However, and beyond aesthetics, these medians make the roads too narrow for the incredible amount of vehicular traffic on them. Thus causing severe traffic holdups.

The situation is further made worse by the fact that some of these roads have been demarcated in order to accommodate the BRT corridors.

Some popular roads with wide median strips that are notorious for traffic bottlenecks, especially during rush hours, include Ikorodu road, Mobolaji Bank Anthony road, etc.

Indeed, a reduction in the sizes of these wide medians should be one of the strategies for traffic reduction in Lagos state.

Or what do you think?