The Lagos State Government has said it is working on a proragmme to reduce by 45 per cent the Green House Gas emission being generated through the transport sector in the state.
It said by 2030, the emissions from mini-commuter buses known as danfos and commercial motorcycles should have been eliminated completed, if all the propositions in the state’s transport master plan were implemented.
A statement obtained on Tuesday quoted the Managing Director, Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority, Dr. Dayo Mobereola, as saying this. He recalled that a study, which the authority conducted between 2007 and 2009, showed that vehicles contributed about 43 per cent of air pollution in Lagos.
Mobereola, who spoke through the Technical Adviser, Transport Planning, LAMATA, Dr. Frederic Oladeinde, at the just concluded fifth Lagos State summit on Climate Change, noted that the study discovered that over half of the transport sector contribution of emission in Nigeria came from Lagos alone while the emission factors for the Nigerian vehicles were close to the Euro 2 standards, which is three to four times of the European values.
He said LAMATA had taken a number of measures to monitor and reduce GHG emissions.
Apart from the study, he said the authority had carried out an assessment of emissions from road transport to determine the impact of the implementation of the BRT on GHG emission as well as the Lagos GHG emissions assessment manual to measure the impact of new transport initiatives on GHG.
He explained that the goal of the authority was to drastically reduce air and noise pollution from the transport sector.
The statement said, “The plan incorporates the introduction of a common ticketing system to aid integration of public transport modes, development of waterways transport network to integrate with rail and BRT, development of a ring road around metropolitan Lagos to take pressure away from the mainland and introduce traffic control centres to optimise the use of the existing transport network.”
According to him, the transport master plan identifies seven rail lines, nine BRT routes, 11 water routes and key road projects for a sustainable urban transport system.
Mobereola lamented that increasing air pollution was one of the metropolitan Lagos transport challenges.
This, he stressed, was impacting health and quality of life, stating that LAMATA had in response developed a strategic transport master plan to cover the 28 activity centres identified in the mega city region.