Broadway Malyan is leading an international advisory team in preparing the strategic framework for Dar es Salaam’s proposed 137 km Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network corridor.
Sponsored by The World Bank and Nordic Development Fund, the integrated transport and development strategy aims to change the shape of the rapidly expanding city, focusing on the 21km-long phase one BRT route which opened in 2016.
Broadway Malyan's partners on the project include Aurecon, Mobility in Chain, CoLab and Pangani Real Estate Services.
Dar es Salaam is facing major population growth with forecast of a metropolitan population of over 13 million by 2030 causing significant strain on the urban infrastructure. The new rapid transport system already enables thousands of the city’s inhabitants to reduce three-hours of travel into the city, down to just 45 minutes by BRT.
Our study evaluates the opportunities around the new transport corridor with a view to its expansion in the future.
The strategy builds on the success of the BRT’s journey time improvements to stimulate a substantial and thriving new connected redevelopment, attracting new inward investment, creating jobs and helping to improve living standards and related city infrastructure. Once completed, this framework will become a prototype approach for all future six phases of the BRT network.
Central to the project is the concept of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) that seeks to establish higher-density, mixed-use development around transit nodes with a walkable and pedestrian-centred environment, encouraging soft mobility and public transit use and discouraging car use, thereby actively reducing carbon emissions.
A critical aspect of the project was stakeholder and community engagement. A range of activities including focus groups, public exhibitions and an active Facebook page were established, designed to reach a wide audience and to gain increased levels of feedback. Interactive workshops proved successful using ‘learning through play’ techniques such as role play and model building to communicate key messages.
To ensure the project properly understands the city’s issues and priorities, the project has taken an innovative approach to collecting and analysing data. Land use and transport models based on a series of data-rich base maps in Geographic Information System (GIS) were developed which were used for testing different transport movement and real estate development scenarios.
