Give the city back its hours

The cost of a city is also the time it takes from the people who keep it working.

OPINION · THE DAILY PULSE EDITORIAL

An hour spent getting home is an hour that cannot be spent at the dinner table, helping with homework or simply being still. Repeated across a working week, the journey becomes part of the price of living in a city. A beautiful skyline does not give those hours back. A better transport system sometimes can.

Buildings matter. So do functioning streets, dependable transport and safe places to walk. Our opinion is that a city’s ambition should be measured partly in the hours it returns to the people who keep it running.

Mobility is more than a road project

World Bank work on Lagos examines how public transport interacts with the existing minibus system. Its work in Morocco discusses investments in urban transport, including Casablanca’s bus rapid transit system, which opened in March 2024. These are different settings, not proof that one transport model should be copied everywhere.

They point towards a better question: does a project make the everyday journey more reliable, affordable and connected? A route can look impressive on a map while leaving difficult transfers or a costly final stretch for passengers.

The person carrying goods, the student travelling late and the commuter with a disability will not experience the same system in the same way. Good planning needs those journeys in the room before a design is treated as complete.

Improve the system people already use

Informal transport operators should not automatically be cast as the enemy of modernisation. Many passengers depend on them. A transition that improves service while creating realistic roles for existing workers may be more durable than one built around their sudden disappearance.

There are trade-offs. Public transport costs money, construction causes disruption and street space is limited. A bus lane may frustrate drivers while helping many passengers. Those choices deserve clear evidence and honest debate, not slogans.

Our proposed standard is straightforward: publish understandable measures of journey time, reliability, safety and affordability. Listen to users when the numbers and their daily experience disagree. Maintenance should receive as much attention as the opening ceremony.

From North African cities to West and East African capitals, the circumstances differ. The ambition can still be shared: a city where getting somewhere does not consume the life you are trying to build. Time is a form of prosperity too.