A lot of major roads in the city of Lagos are known for the traffic situations, starting with the most popular and busiest of them all, the Third Mainland Bridge.

Commuters have been known to get caught on the bridge for hours every day, on a bridge of just 11.8 kilometres. Other roads just like this are the Apapa – Costain Road, the Marina/ Carter Bridge, the Lekki – Epe Expressway (sigh…), the Commercial Road in Apapa, just to name a few.

These are roads taken by civil servants, business men and women, industry professionals and basically anyone who has to conduct any form of business or activity in Lagos. It is safe to assume that any resident of Lagos, no matter how fresh, has already experienced a heartbreaking and depressing traffic situation, which sometimes can be as result of car breakdowns, molue bus drivers, etc.

eXploring, on ONTV this week, took an insightful look into how Lagos residents get to circumvent traffic by capitalizing on other forms of transportation, either by going through water or by rail. These forms of transportation are not generally accepted yet, especially among those in the upper middle class or the middle class who would prefer to use their own cars rather than squeeze in a train or jetty with twenty or more people, as the case may be.

Starting the show, Denola and Zina visited the Ebute Ero Jetty, a route managed by the Metro Jetty that takes passengers from Ikorodu to CMS and back.

Speaking with Engineer Hakeem, the manager of the route who agreed with the hosts about the difficulty of going to Ikorodu by road, it became evident that the journey that would take road commuters two to three hours would take the Ebute Ero jetty passengers way less than that. Using the jetty, passengers can get to Ikorodu in twenty five minutes from CMS to Ikorodu. That is over two hours saved.

He also explained that even car owners now park their cars on the bridge and prefer the jetty, especially when there is traffic on the road to Ikorodu, and then take the jetty back after work, pick up their cars and drive home. When asked about the average number of passengers on the route every day, Engineer Hakeem said that the Ebute – Ero Jetty moves over 500 passengers every day.

The next place that was explored on the show was the Iddo Terminus which, according to the District Regional Manager Mr. Akin Oshinowo, is about a 100 years in existence.

According to him, the Mass Transit Trains (MTT) caters to 10,000 – 20,000 passengers every day. Using the regular train service, a journey to Ogun State from Ebute Metta can take about 1 hour, which would normally take two hours on roads, while with the Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU), a much faster train service with air conditioning and usually used by their high profile customers, the same journey would take just 45 minutes.

Watch the video