A lesson for the planners:You don't own the streets

You wouldn’t have to be a genius to work out why most of the city’s daladala drivers have a knowing smirk slapped right across their face.

And that they would, if they came face to face with the city bosses and the planners, tell them: “Well, didn’t we tell you so!”

Yes, DART, the much vaunted, multi billion shilling transport system that was going to revolutionise our city and get us to the office on time and back again for our supper, is not exactly working as planned.

All those years of preparation have come unstuck quickly and in a spectacular way.

Already 34 buses are out of commission after a series of accidents. And it’s only been going for two weeks!

It appears that DART, a system that functions adequately in many other megacities of the world, did not take into account the peculiarities of the citizens of Dar es Salaam.

The bosses may say DART is only in its infancy, it is suffering from teething troubles and these will be fixed when everyone gets used to the new traffic regulations.

And, to tell you the truth, I am sure that they are right and in a year’s time DART will be the envy of the continent and planners from across Africa will be coming to study it.

The DART disaster though does highlight the sharp contrast between the dreams of city planners and the reality of putting those dreams into practice.

If you don’t quite believe me, then go on the internet and google The Dar Rapid Transit (DART) project. You will find 40 pages of utter wonder, pictures, graphics, bar charts, maps, all in beautiful technicolour. Wild claims are made. For instance what about this:

The system (DART) will improve quality of living for city residents through improved mobility options and cleaner technologies.

The DART vision is also outlined. This is no less than introducing to the city a modern public transport system at reasonable cost to users using high capacity buses that are environmentally friendly, operating on exclusive lanes and run on schedule.

So there we have, writ as in the Bible in clear prose, a pledge to provide the city with not only green buses but ones that are also cheap and efficient. Admirable.

But the concept goes further. The planners also thought to include a further and surely over-ambitious set of claims.

DART, they vowed, would
First: enable poverty reduction
Second: improve standard of living
Third: lead to sustainable economic growth.

Wow! No wonder the scheme was passed. We would not merely be getting a decent and efficient set of buses, we would also be buying into an economic miracle.

So there you have it. The fantasy as written in the prospectus of the planners and the reality as we see on the streets of the city today.

So what exactly sunk the planners’ concept? What element did these people who had so rigorously researched the project and had looked out for every eventuality overlook?

The weather? No.
The climate? No.
The funding? No.
The politics? No.
The economy? No.

So what was it that confounded the planners?

It was, and here I have to smile, our dear old Swahili friends, wananchi, machinga, the man you see pushing a heavily laden barrow the length of Uhuru St.

These are the factors, the human factors, the planners and strategists overlooked to the extent that they have almost contrived to bring down the system.

They have done this by ignoring the new set of rules that were arbitrarily imposed on a city that has somehow coped, admittedly chaotically, with getting to work and working, for all of its life.

What the planners forgot was that business life is not just confined to high rise offices in the city centre. Business life spills out onto the roads and the pavements. TYes, the entirety of Dar is a gigantic, sprawling octopus which spreads its tentacles from the ocean to the outskirts. They forgot this, they forgot that not all of its inhabitants wear suits and ties.

What the planners forgot was that outside under the rigours of jua kali men and women alive literally on the legs, toiling to earn a paltry few shillings by pulling carts and selling nuts and whatever cheap gadgetry the latest container ship has offloaded in the port.

What the planners didn’t account for is that the people who live and die outside the conventional economy need to work. The planners thought that progress was everything. In the bright shining world of the planners progress was everything and poverty, well that just didn’t exist.

For the poor a no-go bus lane is a nonsense, just another annoyance that some big wigs in City Hall have imposed on them, something that can easily be ignored.

So this is what helped to stop the new fleet of buses from operating efficiently. A handful of the little people. It was as if a child had poked a flimsy stick in a gigantic and well-oiled wheel and broken the gears.

What will happen now? The solution is simple. or so it seems. The bus lanes will have to be kept clear. And that means the police will be called in and they will have to stand there and wave them forward along their given routes.

I am sure the planners will go away and re-examine their strategies for launching part two of the project. These people, I hope, learn by their mistakes, which is more than can be said of many of our politicians who spend their entire careers repeating the same mantras and attempting to put crazy, unworkable policies into practice.

Thank the Good Lord that we have a solid and practical man sitting in the State House. Though, to tell you the truth, I cannot imagine that he spends much of the day lolling in an armchair. Our Mr Magufuli is a veritable one-man dynamo. You can be sure that when he saw the havoc on the streets caused by the meeting of street hawker, errant driver and DART bus, he reached in his pocket, pulled out his cell phone and called the city bosses and ordered them to get their act together.

That’s Mr Magufuli for you. Dar’s very own Rapid Action Man. Not quite DART, is it, but then who would want to be named after an acronym that doesn’t quite deliver the goods!