To ferry more passengers, reduce the no. of PSVs!

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

16 October 2016

A perplexing situation exists in the public service vehicle (PSV) industry. During peak hours, there are long queues of passengers waiting for transport; at off-peak time, there are long lines of PSVs waiting for passengers. In Nairobi, the off-peak problem has escalated to the point where nearly all the streets east of Moi Avenue have been converted into PSV parking.

How has this come about: why are there so many PSVs yet so few at the same time? I think the reason is that we have exceeded the optimum number of vehicles needed to move all the passengers.

Because of too many PSVs, we have clogged the roads. This has greatly increased journey times and so the vehicles cannot make enough trips to evacuate peak-hour passengers in good time.

In addition, with fewer daily trips, the PSV operators are not making enough money to meet all their costs. As a result, vehicles are poorly maintained and the crews are pushed to breaking point to bring in more money than is practicable.

Thus we have ended up with very many rickety jalopies driven ever more recklessly and, unfortunately, killing many passenger in the process. All because we have allowed too many PSVs to operate.

I think the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) should put a cap on the number of PSVs that are allowed on every route. But that maximum number should only be determined scientifically using property data.

What data is needed? Suppose that, on a certain route, a PSV in moderate traffic takes one hour to do a round, to and fro journey. If it starts the first trip at 5am and the last one at 9pm, it will make a total of 17 round trips in a day. Now if this is a 30-seat vehicle, it will ferry a total of 510 passengers each day.

Now how many such vehicles are required on that route? To find out, we need to know the number of passengers. The data is available at the National Bureau of Statistics – if you recall, one of the questions asked during the census was “what mode of transport do you use?”

Suppose there are 20,000 passengers on this route: It follows, then, that we need 40 PSVs of 30-seat capacity. As seen earlier, allowing a larger number does not make things any better; it only worsens the situation!

Listening to the Director General of NTSA, one gets the impression that the Authority approaches the management of the PSV industry from a self-regulation angle. So, they continue to license more and more vehicles on the assumption that the operators know the optimum number required.

This market-driven style can’t and hasn’t worked. PSV owners do not have the capacity to collect operational data – they are too busy trying to make ends meet. The time for hands-on management of the sector has come. Over to you, NTSA.