Question

Public Finance

As of 8th November 2013, The land Transport Authority recorded 30000 vehicle movements on the Suva-Nousori corridor on a daily basis. Following these shocking figures, the Authority Chief Executive Mr. Tuinaceva said the question was whether they should consider an alternative land transport system for Fiji like a monorail. The Government then used to approximately spend $25 million on road maintenance and these figures are higher now.

As a policy analyst, you are required to provide policy and implications to the government so that they could reduce traffic congestions during peak hours and suggest alternatives that Fiji should consider for its land transport system.

Answer 1

A government should think about rationalizing private vehicle usage among the citizens only when it has provided a strong public transport system to support the movement of citizens from one place to another. If the rationalization of private vehicles is done without the backup of strong public tarnsport, it would create strong protest from the citizens without much participation and also adversely effect the economic activities in the area.

In the present case, as the vehicular movement on the Suva-Nousori corridor has reached alarming numbers, the government has to adopt two pronged startegy to reduce the number of vehicles using the corridor, without restricting the movement of citizens.

For this, the government can adopt the following policies:

1. Impose fees on private vehicles for entry to the corridor during peak hours

2. Restriction on entry of commercial vehicles during peak hours which would reduce the congestion

3. Increase the public transport like buses in the area and make the service reliable and comfortable to use

4. Introduce modern public transport system like monorail which would greatly encourage citizens to adopt it

5. Encourage citizens to use cycles and other eco-friendly means to travel short distances

6. Make the roads and paths cycle and pedestrian friendly

7. Encourage people to carpool and spread awareness about vehicle congetion and pollution

Implications of the above policies can be:

1. The expenditure on maintenance of roads will decrease as less vehicles use it and there is lesser congestion during peak hours

2. The revenue of the government would increase from the fees collected from entry of vehicles to the corridor

3. The saving in the expenditure and fees collected could be used to strengthen the public transport system and help a little to finance modern projects like monorail

4. As the fees is imposed and people are encouraged to carpool and use public transport, the vehicle entry to the corridor would decrease and will lead to lesser pollution and congestion on the corridor

5. Restriction on commercial vehicles during peak hours would greatly reduce the congestion and accidents on the corridor

6. The increased awareness among the citizens automatically spreads to other places and similar exercises to strengthen the public transport system and reducing the vehicular congestion can be adopted at other places also.