Study of space use conflict caused by informal matatu stages; a case study Ngong town

Abstract

Urban transport has been a critical challenge in most developing countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and some countries of Middle East. The actual baseline of this research project is to provide information on the factors that have resulted to the creation of the informal bus terminus along the road reserve with in the town center of Ngong town.Matatus are the most common form of public transport in Ngong town. Majority of these Matatus are privately owned and the most popular form of local transport.The public transport system also provides employment opportunities to the people who operate them.From the analysis of the study, it was found that the informal bus terminus along the road reserve is accelerated due to rapid increase in public service vehicle to satisfy the transportation demands of the people, lack of adequate parking spaces, Occurrence of numerous trading activities within the bus terminus, Long bus queues leading to delays, Extreme demand variation for public transport at different times of the day. The current bus terminus cannot accommodate all the public transport vehicles which operate from Ngong town because the numbers of the matatu operators have increased. This has resulted to formation of informal bus terminus on the road reserve in a section within the CBD of Ngong town.The market and the bus terminus are well centralized to enhance accessibility from other various parts of Ngong town. Some few years ago when the public transport vehicle had not increased in numbers, there was sufficient space for parking at the existing bus terminus and even some spaces could just be left unoccupied. The unoccupied spaces attracted the traders and these traders decided to use them for business purposes since there is no clear boundary between the market and the bus terminus. Traders tend to take the advantage of this situation by occupying the spaces that are preserved for parking. After some time the public transport vehicle also increased and the parking challenges started to be experienced by public operators making them to seek other alternative ways. There is a lot of pressure between the public transport operators and the traders on the issue of space occupation.