TRANSIT REST AREA

(A CASE STUDY OF ABUJA)

By

Author

Presented To

Department of Environmental Design

ABSTRACT
Among all the modern means of transportation in Nigeria, road transportation is the most popular and cheaper. This is as a result of its easy accessibility to both urban and rural centres in Nigeria. According to the Annual Abstracts of Statistics of the Federal Office of Statistics (1997), about 62 per cent of Nigerians travel by road (domestic only) either by public or private transport. Other means of road transportation include lorries, trailers, tankers, etc. Road transportation in Nigeria has tremendous impact on our socio-economic way of life. Despite its importance, adequate attention has not been given to the aspect of road users facilities on our highways as found in many developed and some developing countries. One would expect that much attention shall be given to the users facilities along with the road network in Nigeria to make it convenient to travellers. Unfortunately, this has been neglected. Most of the existing roads lack users facilities and in areas where attempts have been made to provide these facilities locally, they are inadequate and not properly co-ordinated and organised. One can hardly find a situation where all facilities required by travellers are integrated together in a well-organised environment. This is probably why one finds our major highways in a chaotic situation. Vehicles are parked on both sides of the roads and people make indiscriminate use of spaces, including street hawking, thereby constituting hazard to motorists on our highways. The exigencies of the problems faced by road users in Nigeria with respect to support facilities on its highways dictates the purpose of this thesis work which is aimed at encouraging the construction of parallel support facilities along with its highways by integrating various users parallel facilities flowing together as a complex within our highways to alleviate the sufferings of road users on our highways and reduce risks, break monotony and boredom of driving long distance, and so on.