Note de la rédaction : cet article est une version révisée d’un texte de 2022 déposé sur le site de Sciences Po1.

Introduction

2The notion of socio-technical imaginary illustrates how infrastructure can be loaded with implicit ideas about collective futures. Developed by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, it refers to ‘collectively imagined forms of social life and social order reflected in the design and fulfillment of nation-specific scientific and/or technological projects’ (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015, p. 20).

3It is fitting to understand BRT’s role in Lagos: implemented in the early 2000s, it is a flagship project of Governor Tinubu's urban reform, an emblem of institutional change and the first stone of an envisioned integrated and modern transport system. As such, the BRT and its associated transport projects are proxies communicating to the public as well as international partners forms of social life which are deemed desirable by Lagos State Government (LASG). However, most collective transport services are still provided by paratransit operators. The paratransit industry is a contested arena with specific, at times opaque, arbitrary and violent regulation modes, which does not seem compatible with the gubernatorial global-city-adjacent transport masterplans issued in the recent years (Fourchard, 2021; Agbiboa, 2022).

4How do pre-existing regulation modes in the transport industry challenge the socio-technical imaginaries conveyed by the BRT? This article looks at BRT operations in a time of crisis (2020-2022) to shed light on the outcomes of LASG’s attempts at birthing its modern urban transport system.

5The paper shows how the BRT system in Lagos and the integrated transport system it supports are largely undermined by Lagos state’s double allegiance. Indeed, while successive governors claim to prioritize the regulated transport system, the state’s ties to the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) jeopardize the expansion of the global-city-adjacent envisioned integrated transport system. The impact of various crises on the transport network’s economic model are discussed and I analyze the convergence between the BRT’s and paratransit’s operational modalities (Adama, 2018).

Socio-technical imaginaries and transport reforms

6When it comes to urban planning and especially infrastructure projects, the mere choices of projects, regardless of their completion, is often telling regarding a given government’s hopes for their urban future. I turn to the notion of socio-technical imaginaries in the attempt to dive deeper into the role of imaginaries in the adoption and implementation of large-scale urban transport projects. Socio-technical imaginaries were defined by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim in their 2009 article about nuclear power in South Korea and the United States. In their 2015 volume, the authors note that these imaginaries are not necessarily contained to the national sphere and can extend to other organizations, and emphasize that imagination is a collective practice as well as a ‘crucial reservoir of power and action’ (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015, p. 17).

7They locate their concept between political theory and science and technology studies, in what they identify as a lacking space where imaginaries as political tools apposed onto objects and projects can be theorized about. Calling upon socio-technical imaginaries in this paper is an attempt to understand how projects infused with specific imagineerings for the future fare in the face of regulatory realities: some stakeholders are deliberately ruled out of desirable futures even when they are key parts of present arrangements (Paul, 2004). Indeed, the desirability of imagined future urban lifestyles is defined in opposition to repulsive pasts and realities.

8Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a relevant object to dissect under the light of the socio-technical imaginaries notion. The BRT is a travelling model: it was incrementally created in specific cities, namely Curitiba and other South American countries, and turned into a standardized, ready-for-travel project by a consultocracy composed by a few organizations such as the Institute for Transport Development and Policy (ITDP), Embarq and to some extent the World Bank (McCann, 2011, p. 114; Olivier de Sardan, 2021; Wood, 2019, p. 94). The BRT’s mise en récit - the stabilization of a narrative associated with the material object designed to foster desirability around it by appealing to policymakers’ emotions - is infused with the promise of sanitized, pacified and modernized urban transport systems (Montero, 2017, p. 69; Olivier de Sardan, 2021). These promises generally come from simplified stories of success attributing the outcomes of complex reform processes to specific projects (Montero & Baiocchi, 2022, p. 1546). Hence, successes became associated with the infrastructure’s materiality. There is a near-magical expectation among policymakers for objects to perform miracles, as if the sheer presence of dedicated lanes is essentially bound to foster change. One of the specificities of BRT, and its main sales argument, is the promise of a self-sustaining scheme, requiring little to no operational subsidy. This testifies of the BRT’s paradoxical situation, often used by public authorities to regain control over their public transport services while aiming for an unsubsidized transport option where operators bid to be a part of the scheme and carry a part of the risk (Paget-Seekins, 2015, p. 116). Since the early 2000s, the sales pitch for BRT has been adjusted to account for the experiences witnessed in the case of numerous iterations of BRT launched throughout the decade: documents designed to promote BRT have notably evolved to address the rise of new technologies such as electric vehicles and reinforced arguments of environmental sustainability. This perpetual actualization of the transport mode’s sales’ pitch has contributed to convince new policy-makers up until the 2020s, notably in Africa.

9Transport sectors in African cities are often marked by an absence of publicly funded mass transit options. This can be traced back to the structural adjustment programs taking African economies by storm under the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s impulse in the 1980s (Riddell, 1997, p. 1301). As a result, small private operators took over public transport services’ delivery and became in a matter of decades the main or sole providers of urban transport (Behrens et al., 2016). These actors, designated under the term paratransit or artisanal transport in this paper, are often criticized due to the nature of their internal regulation processes which are often violent, subjecting transport workers and passengers to difficult conditions of life and travel (Agbiboa, 2022; Bähre, 2014; Govender, 2016). However, large-scale urban transport projects have come back to the fore in the 2000s as Africa became the record holder for fastest urban demographic growth. Indeed, while paratransit operators tend to offer routes with unmatched levels of granularity, transport needs exceed the available offer as of now and this demand is expected to grow. Beyond the demographic motivations, national and local governments often backed by development banks or international financiers are also implementing large-scale transport as a pathway to a more desirable future. Indeed, paratransit operators have been criminalized and shunned for their violence and ungovernability (Agbiboa, 2016; Hart, 2013; Rizzo, 2011). Hence, rail and bus projects such as the BRT are presented as a future free from chaos, advertised as statement projects demonstrating the possibility of an alternative, more desirable, sanitized future.

10In these narratives advertising a seamless future for urban transport, the transition from the current structure of urban transport is depicted simplistically. It boils down to replacement, with no afterthought for the specifics of the reform (Klopp, 2021). The BRT is supposed to work optimally if its competitors are replaced through inclusion in the scheme, compensation, or pure and simple exclusion. This fits in the dichotomy between paratransit’s chaos belonging in the past, and making way to efficient BRTs. Yet, replacement is rarely simple, nor realistic due to logistical factors – only a share of passenger actually switches from paratransit to BRT, paratransit routes tend to serve territories more finely, BRT isn’t always as frequent – but mostly due to political reasons. Indeed, paratransit workers are often organized in larger bodies such as associations in South Africa, syndicates in Sénégal, or unions in Nigeria (Cissokho, 2022). While these larger bodies don’t necessarily represent the interests of workers, they remain powerful players in local and national arenas. They can stall or stop large-scale projects when they fear it might endanger their livelihood. Another side to it which has now been documented in the academic literature is their cooperation with public authorities. In Lagos specifically, the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) is known to fund political campaigns for major parties, and disturbing elections in favor of certain candidates (Agbiboa, 2022, p. 160). Besides, the Union is a twilight institution responsible for the management of motor parks and levying taxes on transport workers, effectively acting as state administration (Fourchard, 2021, p. 185-199). While the NURTW’s top management was consulted and involved in the launch of the BRT scheme in the early 2000s, the introduction of BRT was only the beginning of the integrated transport network detailed by Lagos State in its masterplan initially issued in 2010, updated in 2014 and currently under a new rework. The BRT marks the beginning of a slowly-but-surely growing regulated transport system co-existing tensely with the paratransit industry, and eventually meant to swallow it as there is no indicated room for artisanal transport in the masterplan in its present form.

Case Study and Methodology. Researching the fate of an emblem of urban reform

11The BRT in Lagos was launched within the Lagos Urban Transport Project 1 (LUTP 1), a World-Bank sponsored project led by the Lagos State Government (LASG) for the overhaul of the Lagos transport sector launched in 2003. The US$165m project was symptomatic of a wider urban reform undertaken by Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu and pursued by his successors in the effort of turning Lagos into a ‘world class city’ (de Gramont, 2015 and Kuris & Blair, 2014 in Agbiboa, 2022, p. 172).

12Lagos’ newly created transport agency LAMATA, birthed through the LUTP 1, planned and delivered a BRT corridor which was debuted in fanfare in March 2008. This first route provided LAMATA and LASG with a terrain for experimentation and a test-drive for state-controlled urban transport. The project was advertised as an innovative approach to BRT and it was proudly branded ‘Africa’s first BRT scheme’ (Mobereola, 2009). Transport became a locus of self-promotion on the international sphere, and the BRT was followed by a first Strategic Transport Master Plan (LSTMP) in 2010, updated in 2014.

13Transport master plans are storytelling tools depicting the ideal urban transport landscape (Granqvist et al., 2019; van Hulst, 2012). In the case of Lagos, rail lines and BRT routes form the core of the system as the main mass transit modes available. Standard bus routes, monorails, water transport routes and First and Last Mile (FMLM) routes are identified to complete mass transit mode services and ensure a more complete coverage of the State territory. While most of the masterplan’s announced routes haven’t been delivered, there have been advances: the first BRT route from Tafawa Balewa Square to Mile 12 was extended North all the way to Ikorodu, a new BRT line was launched in 2021, the Blue line’s first phase is planned to start operating in late 2022 and the Red Line’s infrastructure is coming to fruition.

14I used qualitative method tools to collect data on the realities of and imaginaries surrounding Lagos’ regulated transport network. Within the framework of my doctoral studies, I completed two research stays in Lagos (February-March 2020 and April-May 2022). I conducted a total of 41 interviews with stakeholders at LAMATA, LASG and transport operators. Interviews were led face-to-face whenever possible, and interview guides were only slightly tweaked from one interviewee to another in order to maintain coherence while remaining relevant. I used meaning-based coding as a qualitative data analysis strategy to structure my analysis. A thorough documentary and press review supported the analysis, ensuring a holistic understanding of BRT’s perception over the years. Lastly, I conducted participant observations aboard Lagotian buses in order to assess passenger experience, making up for passengers’ perspectives’ absence in my study. However, commuters’ needs and frustrations are not central in my investigations and they’re mostly studied from the standpoint of operators and governmental actors. It is a blind spot in this study, which is explained by the mere realities of contemporary qualitative research: the lack of resources we’re faced with when conducting our research requires us to make tough choices. I can only hope that more work on Lagotian commuters’ struggles and hopes is written in the future (see Kadiri, 2013).

Cracking under pressure: operational challenges endangering the BRT’s projected reality

17Consequently, a debate over operational subsidies’ relevance for BRT emerged (News Agency Of Nigeria, 2022). Specifically, the BRT’s status as a public service is at play. The main operating company’s CEO has been extremely vocal on the matter to deflect the responsibility for degrading services onto Lagos state.

‘So the number one cost has tripled, your [fare] stays the same?! It's a recipe for disaster! And that's why I keep telling what nobody seems to be listening: this system will collapse unless somebody decides to do the right thing. The BRT concept is a laudable concept. But all over the world, everywhere, except for Nigeria, the government one way or the other subsidizes. (...) But in Nigeria, we like building things, but we don't think about running it or maintaining it. (…) They don't want to meddle in the operations, which is fine enough. But you do not pass the social responsibility of the state to a private company. (…) We are now subsidizing the Lagos state government. They get all the political benefit, all over the world, people are all like “oh Lagos has done BRT”, they get all of that. But at whose expense? At whose cost? That's the question. It's a political will issue, it's not the money. (Primero’s Managing Director, April 2022)

18The BRT as conceived in Lagos – and often promoted by its advocates – is a scheme which requires little investment and eventually sustains itself. A common argument against subsidies consists in questioning the operator’s skills. Since LASG has a high number of overall potential passengers, according to some voices, BRT operators should generate enough revenue to stay afloat. However, it is a fallacious argument as passengership also depends on several other factors such as route design and the overall repartition of employment and housing in the agglomeration. When asked about the matter, LASG’s transport commissioner is straightforward.

‘So I'm not going to shy away from the fact that we're a poor country. So we know that we don't have the kind of money that is required to subsidize some of the operators, and that's why we are prioritizing subsidy in the form of infrastructure development.’ (Lagos state’s transport commissioner, May 2022)

19However, another important line of thinking is here described by LAMATA’s former Managing Director.

Researcher: The rationale behind [the absence of subsidy] on the side of the regulator - is it due to a lack of means, or are they afraid that people would take advantage of it?
Interviewee: Well... When you look at the system here, you have the unregulated buses which are not subsidized in any shape or form, whose buses are not safe, nor reliable (…) and they are sustaining themselves. So the question is, “why can't you, who has been given vehicles, sustain yourself or run a bus system?”. So in effect, subsidies for urban transport has never been something that’s been totally looked into in most African countries because of the unregulated buses being in operation (…). The government doesn't think that urban transport needs to be subsidized. (LAMATA’s former Managing Director, May 2022)

21BRT is supposed to be the first stone of Lagos state’s integrated transport system and it is effectively a laboratory for the management of a publicly owned and privately delivered transport service. Yet, 14 years after the initial launch of the first BRT route, the scheme’s operational model is under great stress, outperformed by paratransit operators and held to a standard of operation set by danfos and molues. Ironically, this bus scheme rolled out to represent an alternative future for urban transport has grown to offer a passenger experience which is close to that offered by its direct competitors, straying further from an envisioned seamless service.

The replacement conundrum

22Paratransit in Lagos provides 90 % of collective transport services in the city (Jones & Williams, 2022). The estimated number of danfos varies between 75 000 and 145,000, there are at least 37,000 commercial motorcycles in operation, 83,000 molues and 50,000 tricycles (Anudu, 2021; Daniels, 2019). The sector accounts for several tens of thousands of workers. Yet, as of now, there is no room for paratransit in the public transport masterplan.

Interviewee: Looking at the way we started, we are on the right path. But for me, it's continuous collaboration with the union to ensure that they are brought under regulations with proper monitoring and enforcement.
Researcher: Do they have an interest in that? Wouldn’t it decrease their revenue?
I: Mmmh, yeah.
R: I'm questioning what their interest in such a collaboration would be. (…)
I: They have been operating for a very long time without regulation, haphazardly so when a policy comes like that, you know, to regulate them, there's always this kind of resistance to change, it basically affects their revenue generation and their mode of operation. But from the government angle it is always good to make it clear, to let them see the benefit aspect of regulating them, let them see the other side.
R: ...Which is?
I: They are better reformed.
(LAMATA executive, April 2022)

25In May 2021, Lagos launched its First Mile Last Mile (FMLM) service. The scheme’s ambition is to serve shorter routes with 7-seater vehicles, allowing commuters to join the closest major axis from their point of departure (BRT or standard bus route). Commuters can pay their fare using their transit card, and hence potentially complete entire journeys from their departure point to their destination while never leaving the circuit of the State’s integrated transport. It has been denounced as an odd policy choice by operators and former LAMATA staff alike: resources used to launch FMLM might have been more useful to sustain a skeletal BRT offer. However, FMLM is yet another brick laid on the path to seamlessness for the passenger and legibility and control for the regulator. It also speaks to LASG’s image curating strategy: regardless of the performance of said-modes, presenting a variety of available travel modes in the city grants the right to declare one’s transport system as multimodal. It is also a clear attempt at conjuring an imagined future where transport integration is complete.

26FMLM are a direct threat to danfos. While they aren’t necessarily servicing the same routes, they operate similarly by dropping passengers off along the road. Numerous incidents were reported by LAMATA as well as FMLM operators I got to interview. A respondent from the transport agency felt uneasy admitting that the rollout of the FMLM scheme hadn’t been peaceful.

“Researcher: And how has this resistance manifested?
Interviewee: Right now, they manifest it through… They put up like a fight with some of our busses.
R: A physical fight?
I: …At times. ”
(LAMATA executive, April 2022)

28This section’s point isn’t that paratransit is out of control, nor that it has the upper hand on the State as paratransit operators are regularly subjected to violence at the hands of the State’s traffic police and deliberately prevented from operating in some cases (Agbiboa, 2018). Rather, it shows that when push comes to shove, the supposed prioritization of the regulated integrated transport network isn’t upheld because it cannot be. The beliefs and hopes carrying Lagos State’s transport masterplan are oblivious to the city’s massive paratransit sector. The deployment of the FMLM scheme is an obvious demonstration of LASG’s will to replace and swallow paratransit operations, but the actual rollout of the scheme points to the paradoxical stance of Lagos State which ultimately jeopardizes regulated transport options.

Conclusion

29BRT and regulated transport in Lagos is powered by a socio-technical imaginary held dear by policy-makers, development partners, as well as a section of the population. It embodies the perspective of a future where collective transport is a closed circuit, sanitized and legible, compliant with the latest international standards and placed under the State’s direct and complete control. Yet, this imagined future omits current realities. In times of crises, this imagined future seems out of touch and out of reach. The 2020-2022 years accelerated the BRT operational model’s collapse and revealed how much LASG’s expectations are shaped by the standard set by paratransit. The hazardous replacement attempts discussed in the second section indicate that after years of running regulated transport in parallel with unregulated transit, tensions continuously arise as new modes complementing the regulated mass system are competing with paratransit operations. The State government’s unofficial ties with the Union creates limitations to the transport agency’s ability to exert its authority. Yet, the government’s official narrative still portrays artisanal transport operators as undesirables. As a result, paratransit’s regulation modes hover over, define, and restrict the regulated transport system’s operational realities while artisanal transport operators are excluded from the transport master plan. Lagos State needs to make clearer strategic choices regarding its transport future by either securing operators of its regulated transport system or by clearly integrating paratransit operators in its plans (Lombard & Mareï, 2024). Without a change, the ambiguity it currently threads on will eventually result in heightened, untamable conflict.

30All in all, this article is the tale of a maximalist, exclusionary socio-technical imaginary projected over and encapsulated in a BRT system and its adjacent masterplan, which is being progressively dismantled by the realities of Lagos’ transport regulation. It questions the harms caused by the inability to imagine better futures of urban mobility which fully include local pre-existing operators.

31Through this paper and its conclusions, I strongly encourage policymakers from the Global South to engage in the complex, potentially messy, yet essential work of engaging thoroughly with artisanal transport operators in the aim of including them as legitimate partners of urban mobility policies. Aiming to replace these actors through the introduction of new mass transit modes has seldom bore any fruits, and it has often been counter-productive and harmful to low-income commuters.