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Rwanda Trip Review: Does Rwanda’s Transportation Infrastructure Stomp Us?

Rwandan Roads in Kigali

At last, I’m back from Rwanda. I had a very enjoyable trip, but it’s good to be home. The Rwandans were very hospitable and friendly, and they have a beautiful country. As most of you know, I spent some time looking into the transportation infrastructure during my journey and I have some findings to report.

Before I left, Judd asked me to see what Rwanda’s infrastructure looked like and provide some commentary. I went overseas, not quite sure what I should look for, but certain that I would find complete third world chaos to mock. I was surprised to find that many of my expectations were flat wrong, and that Rwanda’s transportation infrastructure is thriving. I saw a sense of commitment and progress in Rwanda that is sorely lacking in the US.

It made me wonder how a country with a GDP that is one quarter the size of the Federal Highway Administration budget alone, ($8.44 Billion compared to $35.51 Billion) could put up a better effort to modernize its transportation systems than the world’s greatest economic powerhouse.

I decided to try to make sense of this odd observation, and break out my findings into topic areas to show how Rwanda stacks up against us in certain key areas. As a disclaimer – I don’t make any assurances that the topic areas I cover are the most widely recognized metrics for evaluating transportation. I went with the standard Commuter Outrage knee-jerk reaction and evaluated the roads based on criteria that an average person would probably find important in a transportation infrastructure. If you want to discuss another aspect or hear my thoughts on it, leave a comment and I will address your inquiries.

For the ratings, a minus sign (-) means they are worse off than us, a plus sign (+) means they are better off than us, and a plus/minus (+/-) means they are on par with us. This system is highly scientific and takes into account any mitigating factor that I deem important. Without further delay, let’s see where Rwanda kicks our butt:

Technology (-): In terms of technological innovation and advancement, I have to say that we beat Rwanda, hands down. But, to be fair to them, theirs is an economy primarily based on subsistence farming with coffee and tea as the biggest exports. You won’t find any high-speed rail systems, metros, bus routes, public transportation, fancy high speed interchanges on the highways or anything else that will knock your socks off. By our standards, what you’ll see there is pretty crude. But, Rwanda is making an effort to modernize. They are pursuing opportunities to expand their railroad, highway, and airport infrastructure. In comparison to the US, they lag behind, but they show far more initiative to advance.

Efficiency/Traffic (+): Here is the first area where Rwanda kicks our butt. There is little to no traffic in Rwanda. Now this is based on the way we conceptualize traffic, bumper to bumper, sit and wait traffic. Rwandans don’t drive or own cars at the rate we do, so there are less of them on the roads. But, the roads are heavily utilized by everyone. There are far less cars on the roads, but many bicycles and pedestrians, which could just as easily cause potential roadblocks. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa; the fact that I didn’t encounter one situation in which we even had to stop the car speaks volumes for the efficiency of the system. Another anecdotal experience should shed some light on the country – a few weeks ago, my wife and I had to travel down to Richmond from the DC area for a wedding. Unfortunately, our schedule required us to travel south during rush hour. Richmond is about 95 miles south of DC, and it took us over 3 hours to get there. That’s more than twice as long as it should take on roads with posted speed limits of 65mph. In Rwanda, I traveled from Kigali to Gisenyi – virtually the same distance in just a little more time – roughly 3.5 hours. That’s on winding, two-lane mountain roads that are pockmarked with potholes, have much lower speed limits and are clogged with pedestrians and bicycles. This stands as pretty sad commentary on our transportation infrastructure when I can travel more efficiently from point to point in a third world country than I can within a stone’s throw of our nation’s capital city. Good on Rwanda; shame on Mary Peters and David Ekern.

Rwandan Commuters

Commuter Choice (+/-): Transportation choice is currently limited in Rwanda. The vast majority of people use the road system to travel between the major population centers. But, as noted above, Rwanda is actively taking steps to remedy this. Soon Rwandans will have better airports, port and rail facilities. It will be difficult for Rwanda to ever match the options we enjoy here, but I grant them parity with the US in terms of choice because they cater to the demands of the populace. The US lays out a smorgasbord of options – from walking and bike paths to commuter rail and airlines, but we don’t subsidize these systems proportionate to their demand. In Rwanda, you’ll find many more roads, but you’ll also find a bicycle based economy that is entirely dependent on those roads. You won’t find the Mayor of Kigali trying to congestion price cars out of the city so that she can build a metrorail system; you’ll find decisions about expansion based on user demand. So, you have less overall choices, but you have a government that listens to the need of citizens and provides the requested choices. As the bell rings on this round, both fighters stand bloodied, but both are still standing.

Priority (+): Rwanda is currently spending almost 17% of its budget on transportation projects. By contrast, the US spends 2% of its total budget and a little more than 5% of its discretionary budget on transportation. This is shameful. If Rwandans can recognize that the key to pulling their country out of poverty and turmoil is to provide a robust infrastructure to support growth, then what is our problem? In Rwanda, I personally observed efforts to repair and widen roads to support growth, and I can tell you, this country is serious about its infrastructure in ways that make us look like the T-ball team. Granted, we’re much bigger and have more to cover – Rwanda is only the size of Massachusetts. But they also have a budget of about $435.5 million – that’s about .0004% of our discretionary budget alone. They have to be very frugal with their spending since they don’t have much. They’re bordered by unstable and hostile countries, they have a very poor populace with little formal education, and they have very little industrial capacity, but one of the main priorities for this country is the development of its transportation infrastructure. You don’t have to look very far for evidence that Rwandans know that the ticket upward on the mobility ladder lies in modernization. We aren’t even in the same ballgame with these guys – this is like playing whiffle ball against the Red Sox.

Rwandan Road System

Condition (+/-): The roads in Rwanda vary in condition. Surprisingly, the major population centers are all connected by paved roads. These roads range from very smooth and well maintained to, in some areas, potholed and bumpy, but most are traversible at a high rate of speed. By comparison, there is a road next to my house that rivaled any poor conditions I saw in Rwanda, and driving around downtown DC last night, I encountered plenty of roads that would kill my car if I didn’t slow down to avoid the obstacles. More of our roads are better, but at least Rwanda is consistent in quality and striving to improve. Rawanda, with no budget, was working to repair the road in at least four places between Kigali and Gisenyi. I have lived in my current residence for two years, and I haven’t seen a truck come to fix the one-mile stretch of spine-compacting potholes and undulating asphalt once.

Accessibility (-): Paved roads link all of the major cities in Rwanda, and they are used by many people in the outlying villages to carry goods to market and transact business in the cities. The roads are open to everyone, from pedestrians to cars and trucks, but there is still a need to expand the system. The roads in some of the smaller cities are not as extensively paved, or nearly as well maintained as Kigali, and if you move off of the beaten path, you can forget about anything approaching a comfortable trip. In fact, unless you have a four-wheel drive, many roads are simply impassable, and even with a four-wheel drive you may still get stranded. Without many current options, it is also harder for a local farmer to export his crops from a village in a remote area all the way to Kigali or to reach the international market. As pointed out under the budget discussion above, Rwanda is aggressively addressing this, but they still lag behind the US in terms of accessibility.

Safety (+/-): There appear to be no traffic rules in Rwanda. I fought in Iraq, and I can honestly say that I was never as fearful for my life in any combat situation as I was in the car driving the roads in Rwanda. When I say that pedestrians and bicyclists use the roads too, I mean they are all over the place and cars mingle between them with an extreme recklessness that would cause such anxiety to most of us that it would induce a vomit response. Amazingly, I only saw one minor accident on fairly extensive travels, and it didn’t look like anyone was seriously hurt. I can only attribute this to the fact that everyone is so familiar with the lack of rules that it affords them a flexibility that American drivers are unaccustomed to. If someone cuts you off here, your first instinct isn’t to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid a collision, it’s to slam on breaks and stay in your lane – the exact opposite of the Rwandan response. It’s a much more fluid system where you don’t practice stop and go as much as dodge and weave, and defensive driving is a concept that would surely result in death for either you or the people around you. The default in Rwanda is aggressive driving, and everyone practices, from the truck drivers to the bicyclists. I still give them equal footing with us though because despite what would seem at first glance to be an obvious deficiency, they are taking steps to address some of the worst problems, and they have nowhere near the mortality rate that we have in our country with all of our rules and regulations. Now, we have more cars on the roads, but Rwanda has a traffic mortality rate of about 16.4 deaths per million people. We measure our mortality rate against miles traveled vice population, but if we adjust our mortality rate for our population we’re sitting at roughly 146.6 deaths per million (assuming 300 million population and approx 44,000 deaths per year). So I think it’s fair to grant Rwanda parity on the issue.

Result: Tie

Impact: We should be absolutely disgusted with our leaders. We pioneered the use of the automobile, invented aviation, built one of the first subway systems, and possess the largest rail transport network by size, but we’re only able to fight Rwanda to a draw in the transportation arena. By neglecting our infrastructure, we are only going to ensure that more American jobs and dollars go overseas to places like Rwanda that actually care about their development. This will continue to drive the costs of consumer goods up and will also continue to inflict untold misery and economic waste on our country.

We’re paying nearly one third of our salaries in taxes to the federal government. It’s time to stop wasteful spending on things we don’t need and focus on the things that enabled our rise to prominence.