By
Abdalah Kileo
Many
jobs, businesses and other activities are drawn into city centers, you can find
shops, restaurants, financial services, Government ministries, libraries,
colleges, open spaces and other facilities all concentrated in a
city centers. Since very few people lives in
the city center, most of those surrounding the
city centers have to access the city through walking, bicycles,
motorcycles, public and private cars for their daily activities. This has
led to sometimes intolerable levels of traffic congestion on urban streets as
well as the main road accessing the city, causing delays and
severely effect on productivity of business, their ability to innovate and
business access to new markets and resources. The problem of congestion span
from the business to people who live in our city, they
finds themselves stuck in traffic when they should be at work or school
and sometimes frustrated at the time wasted in trying to get from point A to
point B. The problem go far where it increases oil consumption and CO2
emissions as well as noise emission from transport, with people living along
congested routes and very busy towns like Dar Es Salaam they suffer from poorer
air quality for most of their life.
Therefore working on different ways that
can reduce congestion as well as pollution is crucial to make our cities safe
and bring about sustainable development, several ways are often discussed such
as; investing in public transport, walking and cycling and so on, but
only a few are concerned with the use of Information Communication Technologies
. Today let’s look on the role that can be played by this technology to
curb the problem:-
Information
communication technologies have been the main driver for globalization, solving
most of the global problems. The problem for congestion and pollution in
Tanzania can be reduced when residents in public and private institutions
embark on different technological applications to manage and reduce the need to
travel. The Information Communication technologies likes e-learning,e-Commerce,e-Government,Intelligent
Transport systems, and others can manage and reduce the need to
travel and therefore curb traffic congestion and pollution in our cities.
For
example we know students contributes to a big number of passengers that
uses public and private transportation. The e-learning system can reduce
the number of students who uses the public and private transport to access the
campus which are located in the city centers, for examples in Dar Es Salaam
campuses like DIT, Mzumbe, IFM,CBE and other which are located at city centers
can embark on e-learning system for their students to take some of their
courses online during peak hours. Online classes is sharing educational
materials via the Internet as well as developing new ways of teaching based
on those materials for both on-campus and online audiences, depending on the
course design, pure online class or combination of online and traditional
class you may take your tests or exams online or come to a testing room on
campus or at a local registered center. Many of
the Universities are already applying digital tools from online
courses in an effort to transform student experiences here in Tanzania.
For example at DIT through Sikshak platform and University of Dar Es Salaam,
programs for Postgraduate through Virtual University are run online. In a
global perspective there are number of online platform like edX created
by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
aimed at expanding access to high-quality education through online classes
while also transforming teaching and learning on their respective
campuses courses. Another platform cousera, which is provides free courses
online in partnership with World top Universities.
Another
way is e-Government where Government institutions smoothly interact with its
people, employees, and other Government. For example establishing one stop
centres is important component to improve the services offered by the
Government to the public. Establishment of one stop centers for Government
services in different locations outside the city centers can
facilitate all the Government institutions provides services to the public
in one roof and reduce the number of people seeking such services in a city
centres.
The centers
which can be located in different parts of the country will provides the
timely, efficient and effective services for residents, this also reduces the
cost of doing business by reducing the normal processing time for
applications and minimize bureaucracy in the procedure and process of
starting a business as well as compliance to different regulations .On the
other hand the Government reduce the expenditures as well as increasing
revenues the act which enhance the public service delivery system by local
governments and improve the business climate condition for investors. The
E-Government will also enable those who can be working at home or those who are
working near one stop centres, reducing their travel time and
pollution.
The
applications of information communication technologies in every aspect of
transportation from managing infrastructures, passengers and business can
reduce the congestion at the same time improving safety and bringing about
sustainable development. Although it’s difficult to develop and implement all of
them due to number of challenges in terms of economy, and technology, we can
partly develop and implement some of them. The applications like e-ticket
booking, traffic control systems, smart parking system, smart breakdown service
system and others can reduce congestion.
For
example in a place like city centers one can spend a lot of time looking for
reasonable parking, the information about available parking spaces can reduced
cruising time drivers spent looking for open spots. Again most of the breakdown
in congestion are not reported on time, this cause unnecessary delay for other
transportation due to condition of our infrastructure, availability of smart
breakdown system which respond on whatever breakdown along the main road all
the time is very important during peak hours. With the current technologies of
WiFi, information and warning systems
installed in individual vehicles, and other applications involving vehicle to
infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle communications can also solve the
accidents problems in congestion. At advanced stage we can embark on a
technologies that allow our cities connected with
infrastructures, system which gives drivers the shortest route possible to
access the city center.
We
have significant challenges to fully deploy Intelligent Transport system in our
country, Information communication technology has expanded the range, the
type and number of transactions that can take place without travelling through
virtual accessibility of goods and services online.
Nowadays
items like air tickets, clothing, electronics, software private and public
services are done online through our mobile or computers. Although online
shopping for groceries and households is still low in Tanzania because of
different challenges like poor internet security, small number of people
capable of using internet and address system where once
your customer has purchased from your online store, the product they have
bought needs to be picked, packed and delivered.e-Commerce in most of
the developed World has enabled people to reduce travel need, optimize use
of infrastructure and transportation to make mobility of people more
convenient.
It
is my believe that when every person plays his part the problems
of traffic congestion, pollution and health as a resulted from emission of
dangerous gases and noise pollution from our automobiles in our cities and
intercity will decrease and finally the issue of safety of our people where
dozen of road transport accidents have occurred will stop.
Abdalah Kileo
University of Fukui Graduate School of Engineering.
〒 910-8507 Fukui Prefecture Fukui,
Bunkyo 3-chome No. 9 No. 1
Abdalah Kileo
University of Fukui Graduate School of Engineering.
〒 910-8507 Fukui Prefecture Fukui,
Bunkyo 3-chome No. 9 No. 1
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