News & Updates

LEA’s Team Meets India’s High Commissioner to Tanzania in Dar-es-Salaam

On 4 February 2023, LEA Associates South Asia Private Limited’s (or LEA India) team met with India’s High Commissioner to Tanzania, Binaya Srikanta Pradhan, during his visit to the city of Morogoro in Dar-es-Salaam.

During their interactions, LEA’s team presented the work done on our project, Supervision of Improvement of Assorted Accident “Black Spots” along Dar-es-Salaam Corridor Phase II: Time-Based, for Tanzania National Roads Agency (TANROADS), a government agency. The project’s Resident Engineer, Sudhakar Reddy, briefed the high commissioner about the merits and the benefits that the implementation of this project brought about for the community.



The project involved providing consultancy services for the preparation of detailed design and tender documents for proposing/implementing interventions for improving black spots on the Dar-es-Salaam Corridor Phase II, a highway corridor that connects the Dar-es-Salaam port to the borders with the landlocked neighbouring countries of Malawi and Zambia.

The team’s key learning from this project, as shared with Mr. Srikanta and TANROADS as well, is that all road projects of major importance (new construction and reconstruction) should undergo road safety audits right from the feasibility stage through preliminary design, detailed design, construction phase, pre-opening and post-opening for ensuring safe and user-friendly road infrastructure in Tanzania.


Project Implementation: In Brief
The Dar-es-Salaam Corridor Phase II had two sections – LOT 1: Morogoro Region and LOT 2: Coast Region – each having different requirements and challenges than the other. Some of the areas of concern and corrective actions administered as shared in the ensuing paragraphs.
As part of project implementation, while conducting safety audit and applying corrective measures, utmost care was taken to ensure that traffic movement in this commercially important route is not affected. In a similar manner, the continuity of activities of livelihood as well as environmental safety of the nearby community was also maintained. Some of the measures were:

• Consultations with local community to pre-empt traffic jams and make provisions for flexible traffic diversion
• For dust suppression, regular spray of water in diversion routes to provide relief to the local environment
• Regulation of weekly markets to ensure that the livelihood of local population does not clash with the progress of work
• Increasing the length of the lined drains to naturally drain out rainwater to natural outlets

Audit of Traffic Management Plan entailed the following findings:

• Potential problems with one-way systems, especially the increased speeds and the connections with two-way streets
• Determining if there were clear sign(s) for both drivers and pedestrians
• Potential challenges with both drivers and pedestrians failing to notice and understand unusual layouts, such as contra-flow bus lanes, despite the availability of traffic signs
• Finding out if streets that will receive additional traffic can handle the increase safely
• Vehicular & Pedestrian access
• The safe provision of public transport services
• Pedestrian/vehicle conflicts within the site and at access point
• Project road sections need to be grouped in close and continuous sections, so that work can be supervised and monitored easily
• In major intersections, the pedestrians crossing the road shall be provided traffic signals

 
For Safety Concerns, the following measures were introduced as part of the project:

1. Adequate road alignment markings with the help of painted drums having luminous bands at the top along with the caution tape guided the drivers to negotiate the work areas.
2. Temporary traffic Signs posts were correctly positioned and were regularly maintained.
3. The flaggers diligently guided the vehicles into the earmarked traffic lanes thus preventing any untoward incidents.