What can cities learn from the public transit in Abidijan, Ivory Coast? Marco Chown Oved gives us a glimpse into their system of bateaux buses.
Photo and article by Marco Chown Oved, originally printed in Spacing Magazine
Spread out over a vast area surrounding a multipronged lagoon, Abidjan is a complex city to understand geographically, and one that is even harder to navigate. Only two bridges span the Ebrie Lagoon, which separates the northern and southern halves of Côte d’Ivoire’s economic hub, and the daily traffic jams caused by these bottlenecks are suffocating.
Yet in a rare move for an African municipality, Abidjan has developed an extensive public transit system that makes Mercedes Benz drivers jealous as they sit in traffic. The bateaux-buses (“boat-buses”) whisk passengers across the waveless lagoon, from one end of the city to the other, even servicing the working class suburbs. All this for the modest sum of 40 cents (CDN) a ride.
This system provides both a breath of fresh air in a city clogged with idling cars and a collective solution in a part of the world that is all too well known for poor government services. It also raises the question of why other waterfront cities — including Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, and Halifax — don’t look into the idea of developing a more comprehensive water transit system, getting people out of the urban jungle and looking over the skyline on their daily commutes.
African cities have very different commuting patterns than North American ones. Philippe Attey, head of Abidjan’s transit authority, SOTRA, says 40% of commuters in Abidjan walk, 30% take public transit, and 30% drive or take taxis. While this means more people are commuting communally, it also means that buses are caught in the chaos of people, taxis, trucks, and carts that clog the city’s roads.
SOTRA was founded only months after Côte d’Ivoire’s independence in 1960, but the bateaux-buses weren’t brought in until 20 years later, once the road system was so congested that boats suddenly seemed like a miracle solution.
The only passenger ferries available at the time were far too expensive and built a world away, so SOTRA opened its own factory and started manufacturing boats and buses itself.
There have been 28 bateaux-buses built to service three lines running to four stations: two in the heart of town, one in Yopougon, a working class neighbourhood in the west, and one in Blokosso, a mixed-income neighbourhood in the east. The longest ride takes just over ten minutes.
As evening rush hour begins, hundreds of people line up for their bateau-bus at the floating Plateau station in the heart of town. Turnstiles allow 94 people — the exact capacity of each boat — onto the quay. For safety purposes, everyone gets a seat. After the brightly painted bus pulls into its mooring, passengers file out on one side, and the waiting group steps aboard from the other. Even in the rain, the whole process is very calm and orderly.
“It’s a dream,” says Clement Kpanhoui, a dock worker on his way home to Yopougon. “If I took the bus, it would take me more than an hour to get to work in the morning.”
Bateaux-buses cut across the long finger-like inlets of the lagoon, rimmed with highways in an almost permanent state of traffic jam. Even on the shortest route, shadowing the two bridges in the centre of town, passengers aren’t taking a short cut but they are gaining time and peace of mind as they stare wistfully out the windows at the setting sun, only barely aware of the honking horns and pollution in the stop-and-go traffic on the bridge just above them.
The bateau-bus system carries 40,000 people every day. While this is only a small fraction of the 800,000 people who take public transit, that proportion is set to increase once two new lines are established, expanding the system further east and west.
“Every borough in Abidjan, but one, is on the lagoon,” says Edouard Kouetto, head of SOTRA’s water transport division. “It’s only logical that we build more stations and service more of the city. We’re hoping to build a new station at the shipping port, because there are tens of thousands of workers who head there everyday, and currently they battle with the transport trucks to get in and out of the port lands.”
SOTRA launched the construction of larger boats in 2002, with an expanded capacity of 144 passengers to handle growing demand. And demand is not only coming from Abidjan. Contracts were signed this year to export bateaux-buses down the coast to Benin, Gabon, and Congo.
Côte d’Ivoire was one of the few African countries not forced to dismantle its public transit by the International Monetary Fund as a condition for receiving loans. Now, with a growing demand for new transit solutions across the continent, Ivorians have expertise they can export.
“Some countries have realized that not having public transit is a major problem. They are now re-establishing their transit systems. That’s the case in Senegal, and we’ve also been asked to train drivers and mechanics in Guinea,” Attey said in a recent interview.
This expanding commerce is part of a South-South trade initiative popular among African and Latin American leaders tired of depending on the goodwill of the West for trade deals.
“We are cited as an example. We are respected around the world,” Attey says. “When I go to international transit conventions, I’m respected and I’m proud to be Ivorian.”
While Haligonians, Torontonians, and Vancouverites may have small ferry systems, maybe now is the time to think about following Africa’s lead.
***
Marco Chown Oved is a contributing journalist to that has had a number of articles focusing on the Ivory Coast. His pieces have been in featured in a number of magazines and online news sources such as Spacing, The Dominion, Global Post and Radio France International.