By Adonis Byemelwa
Dar es Salaam’s congestion is no longer simply a commuter inconvenience. It is becoming a broader economic challenge involving urban mobility, port logistics, freight costs, productivity and environmental pressure, raising a difficult question for Tanzania: how can a rapidly expanding commercial capital remain a functioning gateway for regional trade?
The question has become more immediate following Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner Albert Chalamila’s August 2026 directive requiring long-distance bus operators without special permits to relocate their operations to the Magufuli Bus Terminal. The directive was intended to remove unauthorised boarding points from locations such as Shekilango and improve traffic management.
The intervention has produced some visible results. A Daily News spot-check found that the relocation cleared congestion at Shekilango, where buses had previously gathered to pick up passengers travelling to other regions. But implementation has also exposed concerns about terminal capacity, passenger facilities, feeder transport and additional travel costs.
That tension illustrates why Dar es Salaam’s traffic problem cannot be reduced to unauthorised buses. LATRA says the use of approved terminals is already a condition attached to passenger-bus operating licences, while transport stakeholders have argued that enforcement needs to be accompanied by adequate connections between the main terminal and other parts of the city.
The larger problem is structural. Official transport planning documents identify rapid urban growth, rising vehicle ownership, limited road capacity and the concentration of economic activity along a small number of major corridors as important contributors to congestion.
A Tanroads assessment also found that improving the Kimara-Kibaha corridor had shifted significant congestion towards the Kibaha-Morogoro section, demonstrating how expanding capacity in one part of a network can transfer pressure elsewhere.
The available evidence shows that freight is an important part of this equation, although it should not be portrayed as the sole cause of congestion. The Dar es Salaam City Master Plan’s traffic analysis found that Nelson Mandela Road, which provides direct access to the port, carries particularly high volumes of heavy-truck traffic, while Morogoro Road has historically carried especially high volumes of passenger buses and minibuses.
Those detailed traffic counts are not new enough to be presented as a 2026 snapshot. They nevertheless demonstrate a longstanding structural pattern: Dar es Salaam’s principal corridors carry different categories of traffic whose movements overlap, creating competition for limited road capacity.
The absence of a reliable, publicly available 2026 truck count for every major urban corridor is itself an important limitation. Rather than inventing a current number, transport authorities should publish regular counts showing trucks, buses, private vehicles and motorcycles by corridor and by time of day.
What is beyond dispute is the growth in the amount of cargo passing through the port. Tanzania Ports Authority reported that Dar es Salaam Port handled 30.8 million tonnes during the first 11 months of the 2025/26 financial year and expected the full-year total to reach 33.7 million tonnes, compared with 27.7 million tonnes in 2024/25.
That increase of about six million tonnes in one financial year matters for the road network because a substantial share of port cargo still requires inland movement. The policy challenge is therefore to ensure that rising port throughput does not translate automatically into more heavy vehicles competing with commuters on already-congested urban corridors.
Rail provides one of the clearest opportunities to achieve that separation. Tanzania Railways Corporation has begun moving containers on the Standard Gauge Railway, with the initial service from Pugu to Ihumwa using trains carrying up to 100 containers. TRC says the service is intended to reduce reliance on trucks and ease pressure on the port and road network.
The railway connection is also being developed closer to the port. TRC says the Portlink project will allow cargo to be loaded near Malindi and transported by SGR towards Morogoro, Ihumwa and Bahi, with the stated objective of reducing congestion around the port and truck queues on Morogoro Road.
The economic case for shifting appropriate freight to rail is supported by independent transport analysis. Prof Zacharia Mganilwa, formerly head of the National Institute of Transport and now associated with Sokoine University of Agriculture, has argued that SGR freight services can reduce delivery costs and truck traffic while extending the life of roads subjected to heavy freight movements.
The regional logistics sector is reaching a similar conclusion. During a June 2026 visit by Central Corridor representatives, officials and private-sector participants called for greater investment in inland container depots and expanded rail infrastructure to reduce logistics costs and improve the efficiency of trade through Dar es Salaam.
The development of dry ports is therefore not a peripheral issue. Kwala has been positioned as an inland logistics facility serving transit cargo, while the expansion of ICD capacity in Morogoro and Ihumwa is intended to move some cargo handling closer to inland destinations rather than keeping trucks concentrated around Dar es Salaam.
Road infrastructure remains necessary alongside rail. Tanroads currently lists the Kibaha-Morogoro Expressway as a 205-kilometre PPP project, divided into the 78.9-kilometre Kibaha-Chalinze section and the 84.9-kilometre Chalinze-Morogoro section.
The agency’s project documents identify international traffic serving Rwanda, Burundi, eastern DRC, Uganda, Zambia, Malawi and other regional markets as part of the corridor’s traffic base.
Tanroads has also documented the severity of congestion on the existing Kibaha-Morogoro corridor. Its project assessment estimates that journeys which could take roughly two hours under uncongested conditions can take about four hours under current conditions, while another Tanroads document puts the ideal travel time at more than 4.5 hours and estimates that the proposed expressway could reduce it substantially.
These figures should not be confused with journey times inside Dar es Salaam itself. They nevertheless demonstrate the wider corridor problem: congestion is affecting the movement of people and goods beyond the metropolitan boundary and can increase vehicle operating costs and delivery uncertainty.
The environmental consequences are equally important. Tanroads has explicitly linked slow-moving heavy traffic on the Kibaha-Morogoro corridor with increased smoke and noise emissions and environmental degradation. This provides a stronger basis for discussing the environmental dimension than simply describing traffic as unpleasant or polluted.
Research on Dar es Salaam’s air quality adds a dimension to the congestion debate. Monitoring studies have found elevated particulate pollution at traffic-heavy locations, highlighting exposure to vehicle emissions.
The estimated TZS 4 billion congestion cost should be treated as an economic estimate, reflecting productivity losses from travel delays, fuel consumption, vehicle wear and costs.
Experts argue that Dar es Salaam’s congestion is structural. Economist Dr Hamisi Mwinyimvua has highlighted productivity costs, while transport expert Dr Prosper Nyaki argues that congestion requires more than road expansion. The problem involves planning, land use, public transport, logistics and institutional coordination.
This requires a balanced approach to bajajis, daladalas and bodabodas. They provide first- and last-mile services, but need organised routes, designated stopping areas and integration with BRT rather than unrestricted competition for road space.
DART should likewise be assessed through engineering evidence rather than blamed automatically. Decisions to alter stations, roundabouts or junctions should consider traffic volumes, pedestrian movements, safety and design.
The solution is integrated transport planning. TPA, TRC, TANROADS, TARURA, DART and LATRA should coordinate data on travel speeds, truck and bus volumes, freight movements, terminal use and air quality.
The Magufuli Bus Terminal directive can improve order, but success should be measured by whether it reduces delays. Dar es Salaam needs coordinated rail, road, dry-port and public transport systems capable of moving people and freight efficiently, safely and sustainably.
Now the last sentence sums up the solution to the City’s transport problems. Dar es Salaam should have it’s own autonomus transport infrastructure authority. The authority will have the task of conducting feasibility studies on transportation problems, and come up with solutions that will consist of a combination of transport systems and associated infrastructure. The solutions will be trams, trains, buses with associated infrastructure.