TTP: To save lives and roads

The national traffic regulation forbids a commercial driver from exceeding five hours of consecutive driving. But this is flagrantly flouted by articulated vehicle drivers who are usually behind the wheels for upward of 10 hours. This has been identifies as the principal cause of road carnages involving these vehicles. Concerned by this, the Shippers Council of Nigeria (SCN) has come up with the idea of Truck Transit Parks, which will afford drivers an opportunity to break their journeys into bits. SULAIMON OLANREWAJU looks at the issues involved in the project.

THE Federal Government is set to significantly reduce truck and tanker accidents on the nation’s highways, particularly those induced by drivers suffering from fatigue as a result of long driving, as the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC) gets approval to establish Truck Transit Parks (TTP), nationwide.

The TTP projects as a national vision, is designed not only to spread throughout the country’s available 204,000km network of roads, but also to facilitate land transportation, as dominant mode of transportation in Nigeria, accounting for about 80 per cent of haulage and passengers’ movements.

Building on the unfolding success in the establishments of dry ports or Inland Container Depots (ICDs) in the six geopolitical zones of the country, with the one in Kaduna inaugurated last Thursday, the Federal Government strongly believes in the need for more organised co-join vehicular movements, especially those directly involved in import and export cargo haulage.

The authorities recognis e that although there are other modes of transportation within the country, they lack interconnectivity required to form effective inter-modal systems of transportation, hence the need to entrench sanity on the roads, by investing in transit parks, fully equipped with every modern stress-reducing amenities, for drivers’ peaceful relaxation, including accommodation, in highly secured places, off the highways; while ongoing efforts continue on the networking of rail and air transportation, for a truly enviable inter-modal transport system.

Because of the high dependence on the road network for movement of goods and passengers across the country, crashes involving trucks and other articulated vehicles often occur with devastating effect. The human and economic losses in these accidents have been a source of concern to the government and its traffic agencies.

Between 2014 and 2016 alone, the country recorded 4,663 truck accidents, 961 tanker accidents and 2,145 trailer accidents, making a total of 7,769 accidents of articulated vehicles in three years. Perhaps the most horrific among these was that which happened on May 31, 2015, in Onitsha when a tanker crash claimed 46 lives, 20 vehicles, one tricycle and three motorcycles.

Besides the incessant accidents along the existing road network due to high reliance on road transport, traffic congestion on the roads presents another nightmare. This congestion arises from indiscriminate parking of trucks along the highways which reduces the roads’ width and affects smooth flow of traffic.

Usually, truck drivers work throughout the day without adequate rest and sufficient sleep. This has been attributed to the cause of their crashes on the roads. The situation is compounded by the lack of enforcement of guidelines provided in the national traffic regulation, which forbids a commercial driver from exceeding five hours of consecutive driving on the highways.

“No person shall drive, cause or permit any person employed by him to drive vehicle for any continuous period of five hours, for a period amounting in the aggregate to more than 10 or 10 and half hours in any period of twenty-four hours commencing two hours after midnight except where it is necessary for a driver to conclude a long distance journey, the period may be extended to twelve and half hours in all.”

The national road traffic regulations also stipulates that “where the driver has not had at least eight consecutive hours of rest in any period of twenty-four hours calculated from the commencement of any period of driving and where the duration of a journey exceeds five hours, the driver shall have intervals of not less than thirty minutes in every three hours of the said journey.”

These provisions call for improved road infrastructure and implementation of designed standards for all road types, including the provision of rest-stops and vehicle parking areas at regular intervals.

Therefore this intervention of Truck Transit Park (TTP) by the Nigerian Shippers Council is meant to fill the vacuum created by the absence of interconnectivity in modes of transportation.

Commenting on this, the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Mr Boboye Oyeyemi, who lauded the move, defined a TTP as a public rest area, located off the road and designed to provide temporary rest locations for truck drivers, adding that it was in line with the country’s road traffic regulations that would soon be enforced.

The Nigerian Shippers Council, which is providing the parks in Maraba, near Jos, Jebba, Lokoja, Obollo-afor, Ore, Port Novo, Ogere, and Onitsha, described them as common user facility, off the highways, where truck drivers could conveniently park their vehicles, secure accommodation, procure fuel, food, shower and rest, besides procuring other basic supply like oil and spare-parts as well as service their vehicles.

The parks are primarily intended for short-term safety breaks and also long-term parking services in high-use corridors. When fully operational, the parks will provide security and easy tracking of cargoes along the transport chains.

The project, on completion, will be equipped with a gas station, hotel and motel, restaurants, mechanic workshop, fire station, police post, weigh bridges, automated cargo tracking system and a handful of other necessary facilities required to provide comfort for the truck driver and cargo interests.

Apart from reducing accidents and loss of lives within the 240,000km of road network, the TTP project, on completion will help, in no small measure, to protect cargo interest by eliminating carnage and destruction to cargoes and vehicles; reduce theft of cargoes vehicle on transit; afford cargo owners the means to monitor the movement of cargo with the provision of cargo tracking system at each park, improve trade  with land locked neighbouring countries such as Niger and Chad,  and in the short run, increase revenue generation through improved trade relations.

TTPs will create employment opportunities and wealth for the people within their locations through the development of ancillary businesses around the locations. This will no doubt, increase internally generated revenue of their host states.

The Executive Secretary of the council, Mr Hassan Bello, said recently that the project would be executed using the Public Private Partnership (PPP) model.

According to him, the PPP approach was adopted to attract private expertise and capital investment infrastructure and good service delivery. This he said would make government conserve its scarce public resources for other public needs.

The approach, according to Bello, would ensure the efficiency of the parks as available resources would be efficiently used on infrastructure to make service delivery more effective. The PPP option would also ensure the generation of expected employment and infrastructure development.

The FRSC boss, who described the project as conceived by the NSC as laudable, said, “The FRSC remains steadfast to its mission and vision of ensuring a safe motoring environment for Nigerians and welcomes the initiatives of the Nigerian Shippers Council on the TTP program. The truck transit parks should be built to international standards and its operations only regulated to prevent violations. For TTP to be successful, the enforcement should be effective. To achieve this, the following should be adhered to; offices to be built for groups to ensure continual monitoring and compliance, adequate heavy duty tow trucks to be provided for the operatives for the removal of defiant trucks,  and the use of prosecution.”

He added, “The indiscriminate parking of trucks, trailers and tankers on the nation’s highways has been a major problem to safety, security and free movement of traffic. The TTP project, when fully implemented, will go a long way in addressing some of these challenges. With the setting up of a taskforce to ensure the enforcement, TTP is guaranteed to succeed.”

Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, who spoke recently at a forum in Lagos, lamented the absence of interconnectivity of transport modes in the country.

“We have transport infrastructure in Nigeria. The problem is their linkage. We have airports in almost all the state’s capital. We are already linking the railway to the airport at Abuja.  There is a plan to concession the land ports. In most countries, people don’t visit the ports.  Once the goods arrive, they are transferred to inland dry ports. We will make them ports of imports and exports. By December, cargoes going to outside Lagos must be taken to their destinations. Only cargoes meant for Lagos should be left at Lagos ports.”

The President of Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), Mr. Taiwo Ogungbemile, was excited at the planned development of transit trucks parks in designated areas in the country, saying it was a welcome development.

He said, “We at AMATO consider the TTP project as a welcome development. A project like this is long overdue in Nigeria. Truck drivers need a place to rest. They need a place to park, fix their trucks. They need a secured area to stop and buy food, buy fuel and do one or two things before proceeding on their journey. This will reduce accidents on the highways. The goods they are carrying will also be secured. These and other reasons have made us to support the project. We only need security in the parking areas.  We need water for the drivers to shower and we need good accommodation to provide a resting place for the drivers. After the completion, we will not find truck parked on the road side again and this will reduce traffic congestion on the highways, especially at Ogere end of Ogun state. We support the NSC on this project because it falls within the mandate of protecting cargo interest. We have had cases when all cargoes are lost due to accident. That is bad business for the owners. This will stop or reduce drastically with TTP.”

The Chief of Executive Officer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Mr. Oscar Onyema, lauded the financing model for TTP.

He said, “Leveraging established PPP funding mechanism, SPVs can utilize the NSE’s platform to gain access to low-cost, long–term capital. This can be achieved via public bond issuance by a project company. The SPVs involved in PPP projects can also utilize funding from listed funds focused on PPP infrastructure investment and a good case of this is our recent partnership with the Lagos state Government and Visionscape Sanitation Solution, when N50b medium term note to finance the implementation of the cleaner Lagos initiative (CLI) was issued. In general, the investment prospects for transportation infrastructure are promising”, said Onyema.

Continuing, he said facilities such as truck transit parks and inland dry post are prerequisites for any nation serious about boosting intra and cross border trade. “Therefore there must be concerted efforts to access capital that exists within and outside the capital market for the project.”

To increase private investment in the nation’s transport sector and in project like TTP, Onyema harped on the need to mitigate certain impediments, which he enumerated as inconsistency in the enforcement of policies, unpredicted regulatory regimes, that limit investors’ ability to protect investments, insufficient public sector capacity to design and implement PPP project and security concerns, corruption and other governance issues.