ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE AND URBAN MOBILITY IN SELECTED URBAN CENTRES IN KOGI STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study assess road infrastructure and urban mobility in selected urban centres in Kogi State, Nigeria. The objectives of the research are to ascertain the spatial pattern of road infrastructure in the selected urban centres; investigate the satisfaction level of urban dwellers with the state of road transportation development; assess urban mobility challenges in the study area; and examine government investment in road transport. The study deployed questionnaire and field observation to collect the required data. Structured questionnaire were administered to one thousand, two hundred and fifteen (1,215) household heads in the study area to elicit information on their perception on the functionality of road infrastructure in the state with reference to their urban mobility. Descriptive statistics were expressed in percentages and weighted mean while inferential statistic deployed was Analysis of variance (ANOVA) which was adopted to test the hypothesis. ArcGIS 10 was deployed to produce the topological graph of all the selected urban centres: Adavi, Okene, Ankpa, Dekina, Mopa-Amuro, Kabba-Bunu, Lokoja, Ajaokuta and Bassa-Oguma being the urban centres where the nodes and links were derived. Road network and degree of connectivity were evaluated using topological graph derived from ArcGIS and analysed by Gamma index and cyclomatic index. Z-score technique was also utilized to show variation and depict pattern of road infrastructure distribution in the study area. Findings revealed that disparity exists in the provision of road infrastructure across the selected urban centres in the selected urban centres with the highest Z-score value of 3.85 recorded for Lokoja and a least Z-score value of -0.28 was observed for Mopa-Amuro. The Gamma results of the selected urban centres were less than 0.5 while the cyclomatic index results were in negative form for most the urban centres: Adavi -522; Okene -45; Ankpa -267; Dekina -42; Mopa-Amuro -48; Kabba-Bunu -333; Lokoja -985; Ajaokuta -200 and Bassa-Oguma -9. This implies that the road network connectivity of the urban centres were low as a result of many dead nodes. All the urban dwellers were dissatisfied with road network status while high cost of transportation remain the major challenge impeding urban mobility in Adavi and Kabba-Bunu, traffic congestion in Okene and Lokoja, poor quality of road transportation services in Ankpa and Ajaokuta, and poor road condition in Dekina, Mopa-Amuro and Bassa-Oguma. Findings also revealed that there was a mixed of positive and negative percentage growth rates in the amount budgeted to road infrastructure in Kogi State from 2008-2018. The height positive percentage growth rate of 762.1% was recorded in the year 2015 while the height negative percentage growth rate of -63.5% was recorded in the 2017. This was due to the reduction in Federal Government allocation to Kogi State and other economic crisis impeding the state. The hypothesis result tested shows P equals 0.000 and this implies that there is significance relationship between urban mobility challenges and trip frequency of urban dwellers in the study area. The study recommended that government should review the existing road infrastructure and at the same time utilize the geographical nature of the state as state with abundance of inland waterways to develop an alternate transport infrastructure most especially in the coastal urban centres of the state to provide sustainable alternative to urban dwellers dependency on road transport hitherto.