The current ministerial cabinet announced a few weeks back that a new city next to Amman is in the planning stage. One argument for the new project is that Amman is highly congested and therefore, the need has arisen to move to another site. The decision, in my view, is not only rash, but also unstudied.
Since traffic congestion is the excuse, let us look at the transport sector in Jordan. A detailed and comprehensive 2022 study by the World Bank should have been an eye-opener for the government. (Alas, it seems that it was not.) According to the study, the public transport system in Jordan is “uncoordinated, inefficient, and has poor coverage”. With most buses and taxis individually owned, Jordan has approximately 1,400 buses, 4,000 minibuses, 4,000 shared taxis, and 16,000 taxis.
The number of cars grows by approximately 6 percent per year, a growth rate that is higher than that of the population. Only one-third of public transport users are women and less than 50 percent of women use public transport. Additionally, 52 percent of women are dissatisfied with the public transport system. Furthermore, 47 percent of Jordanian women have turned down employment opportunities because of the absence of viable public transport options, which contributes to the fact that Jordan has one of the lowest rates of women’s participation in the labor force in the world, at 12 percent.
The unemployment of youth, currently at 49 percent, has also been exacerbated by the public transport system. Youth spend 23 percent of their income on transportation, which is an extremely high number relative to most countries. Households pay 17 percent of their income for public transport. These percentages have increased since the government increased the cost of fuel, which led to raising the fares.
Instead of providing an efficient public transport sector that enables greater efficiencies everywhere, the government has been underscoring transport infrastructure (roads and highways) without paying proper regard to pedestrians. Consequently, pedestrians are pushed out of the streets and cities in favor of vehicles.
The other option: fixing the transportation crisisThe loss to the economy is estimated at $3,000 million annually — not counting the economic loss of keeping women away from work. So, why has the government failed to improved the public transport system? One cannot claim the ignorance of decision-makers as an excuse; the World Bank study is not the first to mention this issue.
One possible explanation is that the government is at impasse or suffering from a moral hazard. From the current status quo of importing cars and not having a proper public transport sector, it profits over JD1 billion per year in customs, sales tax, special taxes, registrations, road taxes, fines, renewals, etc. If people were to buy cars at a lower rate, the government would forfeit a sizable portion of this income. Worse still, after coming up with the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Law, the government desires to place tolls on roads as a PPP project instead of, say, offering a railway system.
One might also observe that a few years back, a study of the capital by the Greater Amman Municipality showed that it was not congested at all. In fact, close to half of its lands are empty. So why build another city? Maybe because someone wanted to emulate models in neighboring countries; or because the model had already been suggested by a previous cabinet and some studies are already available. One cannot simply sit and speculate a reason. Instead, we must get serious and solve our very real and present transport conundrum.
Published in Jordan News on Feb 05,2023
https://www.jordannews.jo/Section-36/Opinion/Why-the-rush-to-build-a-new-Amman-26840
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