Even a brief visit to Honiara will provide an experience of the debilitating traffic congestion faced by residents on most days. It could be slow traffic through a section of potholes. The right turn lane into Point Cruz could be backed up and blocking through lanes. Trucks unloading bags of SolRice could be impeding traffic flow. Everyone has a theory.
What’s not just theoretical is that the co-location of the Central Market and the city’s main bus stop on Mendana Avenue is a significant and common generator of queuing and acute delays. On an ordinary day, this dynamic has knock-on effects to the traffic to the outskirts of the central business district.
When the Ministry of Infrastructure Development (MID) signed an agreement with the Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) in 2019 to conduct a major study of transportation across greater Honiara, no doubt solving these seemingly intractable problems was on their minds. The Greater Honiara Transport Master Study (GHTMS) was billed as a detailed study, “to review the current road network, minibus system and traffic management including city and area development plans, national transport plan and other related strategies.” Has it delivered?
Public Consultation
With an unfortunate year-long delay due to COVID-19, the study’s findings and recommendations were only recently presented at the second consultation in Honiara, 22 February 2022. The hybrid in-person/online consultation was well attended by government ministries, industry and business leaders, foreign aid donors and project consultants, eager to provide feedback to MID and JICA’s project consultants on the study’s suitability, effectiveness and prospects.
The presentation demonstrated that a comprehensive assessment of the transport system has been conducted. The GHTMS presents a list of priority projects, across the road network, public transport and parking and addresses both hard infrastructure and policy measures that can be used to improve accessibility in Honiara.
The headline project is the east-west alternative route, which runs from Henderson airport in the east, through to White River in the west. A similar idea has been part of the National Transport Plan (NTP) for almost a decade. The useful contribution of the GHTMS is that it breaks that large project into a series of smaller projects, which can be more readily investigated in detail, scoped, designed and funded.
Summary figure of the GHTMS. (Source: GHTMS)
The GHTMS presents an overall public transport (bus) strategy. This essentially improves upon the existing basic travel patterns of busses, but offers several improvements, including a new, larger central bus terminal, next to the Central Market, new bus terminals at White River and Lungga, and decentralisation of parking in the CBD.
Issued raised by participants included reference to the section Kukum Highway Upgraded by JICA in 2015-2017 – the inappropriate footpath design for all users; and inadequate drainage between the road and the coastline. Participants were reassured that these issued had been considered.
Positive but protracted
The study was positioned as a review of recent related studies, but these were not referenced in the presentation – the Greater Honiara Urban Development Strategy and Action Plan, Transport Sector Project Development Facility, or the current Medium Term Transport Action Plan (2019-2023), which is derived from the National Transport Plan. Nonetheless, it is clear that some elements of these prior programs were relied upon by the JICA Study Team. The legacy of the Pacific Games and climate change impacts will be felt in Honiara in the near term and should be central to current planning.
The GHTMS will become another archived study unless bold, considered and integrated decision-making is employed. The social and environmental impacts of the congestion solutions are as substantial as the technical challenges in engineering the alternative routes. How such projects are funded will most likely become a matter of bilateral negotiations. JICA has a positive but protracted track record of delivery on its own studies. Until then, the Mendana Avenue crawl will continue.
Solomon Islands 
Papua New Guinea 
