Featured | Jan 25,2020
Apr 6 , 2019
By KALIKIDAN HAILU ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )
Addis Abeba will receive an 847 million Br bus terminal and transport management institute in two years paid from the government coffers.
To be built in Akaki Qality District, the construction of the two facilities was launched last Thursday, April 4, 2019, in the presence of Mulu G. Egziabher, state minister for Transport, and Abdisa Yadeta, director general of the of Federal Transport Authority.
Two local companies, FE Construction Plc and Beha Construction Building & Water Works Contractor, were awarded the two projects. Another local firm, Ethiopian Construction Design & Supervision Works Corporation, established in 2015 with experience working on the Ribb and Gidabo dams, as well as designing the Akaki and Legedadi water well projects, will consult and supervise the projects.
FE Construction Plc, a grade one contractor that recently secured housing construction contracts from the Federal Housing Corporation, will build the bus terminal for 445 million Br. The terminal, which is expected to be finalised in 18 months, will rest on 37,366Sqm of land and will have asphalt parking and access roads, CCTV cameras and a four-storey building, and it will be located on the current Qality bus terminal.
The building will occupy a 5,120Sqm of space and will host a conference hall, offices, shops, banks, restaurants, ticket offices and waiting rooms.
The terminal will have the capacity to serve 130 buses, 16,120 passengers a day and will serve as a transportation depot for 17 routes to the south, southeast and eastern parts of the country.
The terminal will be joining the other six bus terminals that are operational at the five gateways of the city.
The contracts were signed on February 13, 2019, and the contractors took over the site on March 19, 2019. FE Construction has already mobilised and is conducting initial construction surveying, according to Shimeles Alemayehu (Eng), operational manager at FE Construction.
"Construction of the new terminal will happen alongside the current terminal's continuing operations," said Yigzaw Dagnaw, communications director of the Federal Transport Authority.
The second project, contracted to Beha Construction, is also located in Qality district inside the compound of the current Drivers & Mechanics Training Centre. The nine-storey training institute will rest on 5,093Sqm of land and is expected to cost 382 million Br.
Expected to be completed within two years, the institute will have dormitories, classrooms, a gymnasium, a lounge and a parking lot. The institute is expected to enroll 2,500 trainees at a time for short term training. It will also be used to train drivers as well as housing a traffic research centre.
"We aspire to start a degree programme in the transport sector by enrolling 1,000 students a year," Yigzaw told Fortune.
As of last year, there were a total of 60 driver and mechanic training centres in Addis Abeba that are operating with 519 dedicated training vehicles.
The construction of the centre will have a positive impact on reducing traffic accidents, according to Shewaye Mersha, a lecturer at Kotebe Metropolitan University, Department of Urban Transport Management.
In the last fiscal year, the city recorded 478 fatalities, 3,133 injuries and 28,289 road accidents.
In Ethiopia 36.36 people out of 100,000 die due to traffic accidents annually, according to a World Health Organisation report in 2017. This ranks the country as the 22nd most dangerous, while Kenya is 16th and Sudan 27th.
"We've made different assessments and found out that most of the accidents are caused by drivers that obtain driving licenses illegally."
In the capital, there are over a million driving license holders, which accounts for more than 75pc of the total number in the country. In 2017, only 62,000 licenses were issued.
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