The Lagos government has commenced reconfiguration and remodelling of 60 traffic-prone roundabouts across the state as part of efforts to reduce travel time and congestion.
Dr Frederic Oladeinde, the Commissioner for Transportation disclosed this at a news conference in his office before embarking on inspection tour of the roundabouts on Friday in Lagos. The reconfiguration is starting with Ikotun, Allen, Maryland, and 2nd Lekki Roundabouts.
Oladeinde said that the development has become imperative to combat gridlock and increase the capacity of the junctions to accommodate vehicular pressure and demands.
“We have since the early days of the administration of Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, committed ourselves to ensuring reduction in traffic congestion by resolving key gridlock points. We started off through discovery of 60 gridlock junctions and areas across the state.
“Seven pilot scheme were unlocked, we progressed in the traffic management measures to 27 locations and now we are working on four major junctions by removing the roundabouts presently causing chaos during turning movements.
The identified four roundabouts are Ikotun, 2nd Roundabout on Lekki-Epe Expressway, Allen Avenue Roundabout and Maryland,” the commissioner said.
According to him, apart from the pedestrian activities and chaos during turning at the junctions, the roundabouts have insufficient capacities to cater for the traffic volume during peak hours.
He said that the four roundabouts, billed to be delivered in four months, would improve travel time, free flow of traffic and by extension promote economic development and growth of the state.
Oladeinde said that the junction-improvement work would include removal of roundabouts and separate streams of traffic through Traffic Signal Lights (TSL).
He added that the work would synchronize all TSLs through intelligent traffic systems which would recognise the densities of traffic streams and give priorities accordingly.
The commissioner said that the project would also introduce stacking lanes for both left and right turns at the junctions, which will contribute to increasing the capacities of the roads at the junctions, thereby reducing travel time.
Oladeinde reiterated that Lekki toll would be completely cashless from Jan. 1, 2020 with a view to removing problem of collecting balance by motorists, which had been responsible for gridlock around the toll points.