Addis Abeba's Transport Gridlock Wears Commuters Thin

Sep 27 , 2025. By YITBAREK GETACHEW ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER ) , BEZAWIT HULUAGER ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

Early morning streets, once the domain of brisk walkers and eager schoolchildren, are now warzones of anxiety and improvisation. As students return to school and offices resume full throttle, Addis Abeba’s mass transport network is buckling under the strain, YITBAREK GETACHEW & BEZAWIT HULUAGER, Fortune Staff Writers, report.

Crowds swell before dawn at some of Addis Abeba’s busiest intersections, and the tension hangs in the cool air long before the sun has fully risen.

Around Haile Garment Roundabout, Saris Abo, and Adey Abeba, passengers jostle for position where curbs give way to makeshift taxi stands. When evening falls, congestion migrates to the Saris and Bole areas, especially the stretch near the Skylight Hotel, located in front of the airport cargo terminal. There, Lines snake well beyond the sidewalk as a sea of commuters waits not for automobiles, but for the slim chance of securing a seat.

Order, when it emerges, vanishes as quickly, and the wait often drags past an hour.

Few know the frustration better than courier Mulugeta Teshome. On a recent weekday, he got up at 11:30am, reached Haile Garment by 1:00pm, and promptly received a 100 Br fine after stepping outside a pedestrian lane.

“My friend paid 150 Br for wearing earphones,” he said.

Worse awaited him. Taxis were scarce, and the only public bus to Megenagna arrived after he had waited another hour. Mulugeta, who frequently travels between Mexico Square and Megenagna, now spends more than an hour each morning finding a ride out of Haile Garment.

“I wake up early, but there is no taxi," he said. "It’s a mass.”

Since schools reopened, the routine journey that once took about an hour now consumes two.

“At night, sometimes we pay double, other days it’s normal, or sometimes they add a fee," Mulugeta told Fortune. "Taxi prohibition is unnecessary. We should be able to get our choices on time.”

Mekdes Mola, a mother of three, shared Mulugeta's exasperation. She spends 1,000 Br each month for her two children's dedicated seat in a student service, occasionally receiving priority herself because a child in uniform accompanies her. Although her office and her children’s school sit side by side in the Bole neighbourhood, she increasingly arrives late. Her managers have noticed.

“Getting transportation is a crowded mess,” she said. “If my son arrives before me, I've to pick him up later. I ask myself, 'Is transportation a luxury?' ”

The cost, she insisted, is less troubling than the time she loses each day. The fundamental flaw for her is the city’s “mass transport system,” which caps fares but inadvertently keeps taxis out of high-demand districts.

Negash Molito, whom works for an insurance company in 22 area travels along Debre Zeit Road and knows the drill so well that he stood last week in the Saris Abo queue beneath a handbook he held aloft to block the sun. Since September’s school reopening, he has traded the predictable commute of old for a gauntlet of long lines and half-empty taxis afraid to stop where traffic controllers loom.

“Most of the time, my transport is with those who simply pass by,” he said. “We've no choice, unlike people elsewhere.”

On some mornings, a few hardy commuters gather as early as 3:00am to beat the rush, leaving the queue still lengthy when others arrive at first light. At times, officials from the city’s transport bureau intervene, ordering taxis and privately owned three-wheelers to take reluctant passengers on board.

“The authorities have to provide a solution, either through mass transit or taxis,” Negash said. “This place has always been like this, not now.”

Student traffic has turned driving itself into a headache. Drivers on the Megenagna-Mexico route grow weary of the conflicts over pick-up points, route sign changing fees, and other fare hikes that can reach 2,000 Br a month for some routes.

Nahom Mengistu, a Tiger Bus driver, believes staff operating the dedicated student lines enjoy a steadier income, but he is convinced that terminal-based service could still thrive if managed well.

The job of smoothing these bottlenecks falls partly to individuals like Samuel Teshale and his 13-member crew working on the Saris taxi Terminal. Samuel scanned the crowd outside his booth and counted double rows of passengers edging forward inch by inch. Forty-three taxis serve Saris, yet Samuel saw that the supply never catches up with demand. Mornings move marginally faster, but evenings can trap commuters for an hour or more.

For him, the other contributing factor is the lack of a terminal.

“If there were one, congestion could be managed because taxis could be controlled," he told Fortune.

Samuel calls the city transport bureau almost daily for spare vehicles; sometimes relief arrives, sometimes it does not. Often, police officers step in, forcing idle private cars to load passengers when shortages become acute. According to Birzegen Girma, a transport controller stationed nearby, conditions deteriorated the moment students returned to class.

“In the past, streets were full of taxis," she said. "Now, they’re full of passengers. Many cars are moving at the same time, but they’re empty.”

Her supervisors instructed her to prioritise students during the morning rush, though at night the policy loosens. Some drivers dodge their assigned routes, wary of incurring hefty fines should they be caught straying by traffic officers. Saris feeds destinations ranging from Garment and Sefera to Lafto, Bulbula, Aqaqi, Gelan, and Koye, but the taxi count remains far below what would be needed to satisfy such a broad map.

“It’s very crowded here," said Birzegen. "We need more transportation providers.”

That would be drivers like Abraham Tadesse, who operates a Lonchin micro-van on the route from Qality to Piassa. After shuttling students in the morning, he works straight through until 9:00am, caused by the unavoidable morning traffic jam, a schedule that barely scratches the demand. He blames a jumble of regulations, chief among them a taxi prohibition in congested zones and limits on operating outside pre-approved routes. He recalled the time he was able to pick up a passenger at 7:00am, which was 9:00a.m. last week.

Traffic jam on weekdays slows his trips to a crawl, taxing the patience of riders already fatigued by long waits. The price of ferrying students now varies widely by vehicle type, such as Lonchins and “Obama” minibuses, which generate anywhere from 40,000 Br to 100,000 Br a month of service for their drivers.

For leaders of Taxi owners' associations, these are revenues that only allude to the struggle. They blame a 30 Br jump a litre at gas pumps, an expense that slices into every fare. The city's Transport Bureau imposed a 500 Br fee per vehicle to change the destination indicator, a sign that costs squeeze operators from all directions. Spare-part shortages crippled service, forcing operators to scavenge and improvise machinery parts to keep ageing buses on the road.

Higer buses do help, carrying as many as 45 passengers per trip during rush hour. Yet, the fleet cannot keep pace with the capital’s swelling population.

Association leaders, such as Nuredin Ditamo, head of Nib Taxi S.C., with over 250 members, and Hailemichael Haile, a board member of the Nigal Hayger Bus Owners Association, attributed repeated penalties for dwindling fleets on the streets.

“The people who drafted the rules aren’t driving,” said Hailemichael, who saw 500 feelyts under his association dropped by 90 in recent months. "They underestimate the hit drivers take each time they are fined or required to idle in traffic."

Officials from the city's Transport Bureau insisted they were prepared for this year’s school rush, but they met with mixed results at best. The Bureau Head, Yabibal Addis, hopes that staggered school hours will ease the worst bottlenecks. With approximately 4,000 blue-and-white taxis and an additional 6,000 support taxis serving a metro area of nearly five million (according to city administration official data), the city transports roughly 1.4 million students and several hundred thousand public servants each weekday.

School zones, meanwhile, have become increasingly accident-prone, raising safety alarms alongside the congested roads. The cost is more than lost patience. It also undermines productivity, inflates costs for businesses, and saps the city’s competitive edge.

According to multiple studies, including a new research by a trio from Addis Abeba University's College of Development Studies, and official reports, traffic congestion in Addis Abeba exacts a direct annual toll of between 696.6 million Br and 806.3 million Br. The researchers, Semen Bekele, Dawit Diriba, and Shimeles Damene, examined nine road segments and sampled 3,240 participants, discovering that time wasted on the roads accounts for 74pc of this cost, compared to unreliability (20pc) and fuel (six percent).

Some corridor-level studies put the figure even higher. One notorious choke point, the Kolfe District 18-Compressive Road, alone racks up 274.2 million Br in lost economic value each year. Researchers estimate that congestion drains as much as three percent from the GDP, a loss of up to 186 billion Birr annually.

Urban planners attribute the issue to a toxic combination of rapid population growth, underinvestment in infrastructure, and inadequate integration of public transportation systems. Meanwhile, Addis Abeba’s much-vaunted light rail system, once hailed as a solution, has become emblematic of the problem. Only half the trains are operational. The rest stand idle for lack of maintenance, offering commuters little respite from the gridlock above ground.

Officials acknowledge the crisis but face a daunting investment gap. The city estimates it needs half a trillion Birr over the next decade to expand and modernise its roadways, dwarfing the current annual allocation of 11.6 billion Br.

Anbesa and Sheger Bus services, staffed in yellow-red and blue uniforms respectively, have taken on the longest lines, and a private import of 100 green electric buses from Belay AB Motors offers a glimmer of relief. Nonetheless, further expansion depends on final approval from the city administration. To plug gaps, the Transport Bureau has instructed the associations to reinstate sidelined vehicles on the road and banned overloading of students.

Even so, Yabibal conceded that enforcement of taxi tariffs and operating zones remains difficult.

“We want the public to use mass transportation," he told Fortune. "We've no choice.”

Disputes between transport officials in Addis Abeba and neighbouring Sheger City complicate coordination. The federal Ministry of Transport & Logistics is now working with regional bureaus to standardise tariffs and prevent cross-border squabbles.

Urban-mobility scholars, such as Abiy Alene, who teaches at Kotebe Metropolitan College, see deeper structural flaws. They argue that high-capacity trucks hauling construction materials clog key arterials when they roam at will.

“Trucks must operate on time without using rush hours indiscriminately,” Abiy told Fortune.

He applauded the city’s tentative embrace of mass transit, but warned it cannot rely on buses alone.

“It needs full implementation,” he said, calling for dedicated rapid-bus corridors, more mass-transit providers, and an overhaul of the rail network.

According to Belete Ejigu (PhD), a lecturer at the Civil Service University, studies on emerging metro systems are being conducted worldwide. He cited Nairobi’s staggered school hours and New Delhi’s extensive school-bus network as possible templates. He favours safe loading zones akin to those in Singapore or Bogotá, combined with a nationwide cashless fare system modelled on Kenya’s. For public transit to thrive, Belete believes integrating taxis and buses under a single payment scheme similar to Cape Town’s.

Abiy named congestion, outdated roads, poor modal coordination, and lax enforcement among the capital’s biggest weaknesses. He also urged policymakers to think multimodally and prioritise walking and cycling in tandem with strict law enforcement.

If the reforms sound ambitious, commuters like Mulugeta and Mekdes view them as long overdue. Each cold morning, they file into lines that no longer shock them, clutching small change as insurance against sudden fare hikes or traffic fines. They do so knowing that even as Addis Abeba builds electric-bus fleets and rewrites taxi codes, the city’s streets will awaken to the same chorus the next day. Hundreds of thousands of voices are asking, sometimes pleading, for a seat that may never come in time.

PUBLISHED ON Sep 27,2025 [ VOL 26 , NO 1326]