2023 Freetown DAT Report - Flipbook - Page 46
Freetown DAT
Safeguarding Future Cable Lines & Roads
Rights-of-Way
Encroachments on rights-of-way can, theoretically, be
addressed even long term after they occur, but politically
and legally it is much harder. Selective enforcement can
appear to be unfair, leading to a backlash.
One of the greatest risk to a deliberative planning
process is haphazard development which threatens any
community consensus. Freetown City Council planning
efforts, including Transform Freetown, have created a
planning and action agenda to build a sustainable and
resilient Freetown. The Freetown Zonal Plan work has
advanced the capacity of FCC to properly regulate.
Between limited legal authority and limited resources,
however, much of Freetown’s development and
redevelopment is uncontrolled and is not necessarily
advancing Freetown’s planning.
Even if FCC had control of the regulatory process, it is
not clear that it has the resources to fully implement
such measures. In the long term, to properly address
these issues FCC needs a devolution of legal land use
planning and permitting authority from the national
government. Certainly, with its planning over the last five
years, FCC has made immense progress in these areas
since the World Bank (2018) identified some of these
same challenges.
This issue was explored in Transform Freetown and
the 2014 Freetown Structure Plan, with a focus on the
devolution of land use planning and building permits to
the Freetown City Council from the national ministry
where it is currently held. Obviously, devolution is a
powerful step, but without it uncontrolled growth will
reduce property values and growth opportunities and
increase the cost of the central government and the FCC
to provide services.
All of these issues are compounded by the challenge
of limited clear property land records as evidenced by
50% of Sierra Leone lower court case relating to land
disputes (Source: World Bank 2018).
The Freetown City Council’s ability to prevent
incompatible development is virtually non-existent.
FCC efforts to protect their vision are often forced to
relying on getting desired development in place over
private land before uncontrolled development occurs
(for example, installing cable car cables before new
tall buildings are built that would block a route). This
approach, however, is expensive and precludes effective
holistic planning.
The road authority’s ability to enforce rights-of-way
encroachments is a bit stronger but is still limited.
The road authority likewise needs the resources for their
encroachment prevention efforts.
Such efforts, however, will take a long time. In the short
term, there are several options for moving forward.
First, FCC can work with the road authority to prioritize
preventing and removing all permanent encroachments
within two kilometers of each future cable car station
and within ½ a kilometer from the new enhanced bus
service currently being developed. The resource and
political cost of addressing encroachments early is far
less than addressing them later. Creating clear travel
pathways for pedestrian travel is far less expensive and
more effective than the equivalent investment in any
kind of transit system
Second, FCC can likewise work to prioritize addressing
transient parking on pedestrian pathways. The demand
for parking, the lack of a viable mass transit system
alternative, and the lack of resources limit the ability to
prevent the majority of parking encroachments, at least
until an effective mass transit system is put into place.
Priorities to remove transient parking encroachments
should include 1) encroachments which create significant
bottlenecks to smooth roadway traffic flow, and 2)
encroachments which impede economic development
potential (for example, the heritage trail loop this report
43
recommends for downtown). Transient parking needs to
be addressed by some combination of enforcement and
physical barriers.
Third, although limited by legal authority and resources,
Freetown and the central government can explore
other measures to bring together the tools that they
do have to limit the height of new buildings that would
block planned cable car routes. Bringing all of the tools
together (e.g., allowing access to water supplies or other
services) can create a systems of incentives. Part of this
is simply making the business case that development
that does not block cable car routes will benefit from
the increased land values that come from cable car
development.
Stormwater Management
Stormwater management is not generally seen as a
cable car, transportation, or downtown investment issue,
yet uncontrolled stormwater has adverse impacts in all
of these areas.
In recent years, the Freetown City Council has increased
its focus on reduction of trash being dumped, removal
of trash that is dumped, and unclogging blocked river,
stream, and stormwater channels. These measures are
intended improve public health, reduce insect disease
vectors, reduce both riverine and local flooding, and
improve the quality of life. Localized flooding during the
rainy season and storm events also slows pedestrian
travel, creating more incentives for pedestrians to travel
by motorized transport and adding more traffic to the
roads at the very time when travel times are slowed by
rainfall.
Continuing and expanding these efforts needs to be a
key element in shortening pedestrian travel paths and
times. The most cost-effective way to move people
will always be making it easier to walk than any other
mode of transportation, especially for those distances
of between one and two kilometers where people with a
Efforts to protect roads rights-of-way from
encroachments can be prioritized for the greatest impacts.
