Addis Mayor Deriba Kuma on Friday November 13, 2015 decided the fate of five road projects in Addis Abeba that had caused disputes between two government bodies: the Addis Abeba City Road Authority (AACRA) and the City Plan Institution.
Two different bodies produced the master plan and road design for the city of Addis Abeba. The master plan was designed by a group of urban planners and allied professionals and is revised every decade. The components within it, however, could be revised biennially, depending on requirements that may arise. Institutions like the City Road Authority (CRA), submit concerns that may have been overlooked by the master or structural plan. Once the plans or components are approved, it is the duty of the municipality to enforce them.
“When the Roads Authority proposes a new design, this should be strictly aligned with the master or structure plan of the city, except when fundamental changes occur, such as widening of street for the light rail development or other major infrastructural developments like the Gotera interchange,” said Alazar Assefa, (MSc), a former staff of the municipality of Addis, and lecturer at the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction, & City Planning.
Institutions like AACRA propose design revisions, based on observations seen on the ground. Data are collected and the existing environment is surveyed, before the design team gets to work. The whole process can take up to a year, before construction commences.
By the time construction starts, after the process of preparing and executing tenders, structures that were not there during data collection, are found on site.
Both the district and municipality are notified when redesign is undertaken, says Tibebu Arega, an urban planner at AACRA. However, when land is leased, the lessee is not notified of pending redesign. This, in addition to problems of accuracy when the site is first surveyed and bounds are established, causes lots of hindrances to the implementation of the redesign.
Two of the five roads that had had their construction processes delayed due to such reasons have been under construction for four years.
The street that goes from Olympia to Mesqel Flower, was deemed to be too narrow. In addition, the junction at what is commonly known as Mullushewa, needed improvement. So AACRA proposed the street be widened to 40m, and the junction replaced by a roundabout.
But that design had three physical obstacles, nine square metres of a 13-storey building still under construction, the fence of Berhan Ethiopia Cultural Center, and another four-storey building that would have to be completely demolished.
However, because the municipality decreed that the 13-storey building should not be demolished, the roundabout was redesigned and shifted accordingly. This resulted in the demolishing of shops and houses around that area. Landowners that were not informed of the redesign, now have to be resettled elsewhere.
“The road gets too much traffic from the airport,” said Mulugeta Abraham, head of Road & Transport Infrastructure Design Operation at AACRA, so the redesign was necessary.
Then, after months of persistent communication from the cultural centre to various concerned institutions, arguing for the significance of the cultural centre, in the context of both its rarity and the plans of the Ministry of Culture & Tourism, its fence was saved at the cost of an area that was meant to be demolished for redevelopment anyway.
Whichever option was taken, the four-storey building would still be demolished.
After making his ruling at Mullushewa, the Mayor visited another project of AACRA: the road that connects the Ministry of Mines to Yerer Mebrat Hail; but the problem along this road is found at the segment of the road around Egziabher Ab Church. Here, owners of 29 residents were looking for a fair judgment, as the current design would demolish all of their homes. Unlike the people around Mulushewa, these residents had provided an alternative solution, through AACRA.
Nigusse Denesa, 74, retired father of five, has been living in this neighborhood for 25 years after getting the land from the military government.
“We, the neighbours have written a letter and given it to the Plan Institute a lot of times to use the alternative way. But if it is decided to construct the road through the main road which passes through my fence, it will demolish all the fence and more than half of my living room up to 7.5m which hurts me a lot. It is hard for an old man like me to build a house all over again with their unspecified compensation,” Nigusse told Fortune crying his eyes out.
AACRA has proposed a new alternative design that passes along the area of Egziabher Ab Church, where the Orthodox Eaithful gather for Timket (Epiphany) to connect to Yerer Mebrat Hail, said Tibebu,. That will spare the church’s new fence and also save all the houses in the immediate vicinity of the church.
A source in the church claimed that the land through which the proposed road would pass, was legally given to the church for the construction of a school. Now the Mayor’s decision has helped the church retain the land. The Plan Institute wanted the road to be constructed along the former track which is on the master plan. The new plan will go 2.5m into the church property on the other side of the road, taking all 29 houses there.
Tesfaye Gelaw, who has lived in the area for 10 years, will lose all of the small bar he is keeping as well as part of his residential house.
“I do not know how the church will be affected if the road is constructed through the alternative design rather than dispersing our family. As far as I know that place has been garbage dumping site, which the construction of the road would have improved,” said Tesfaye emotionally.
Another area where similar problem has occurred the Bole Bulbula condominiums, whose construction started a year ago. The Mayor has made no decision for this area. There were two new buildings under construction, both of which have now stopped. Although the plots were leased legally, one plot will totally be overtaken by the road, while the other plot will lose about 1.2m. A proposed design will also demolish the fence of a church in the area.
“In some cases, specifically on junctions of arterial streets, engineering design of curvatures for interchanges (overpass or underpass) and roundabouts might overwhelm the master plan decisions, if the junction design was not preconceived by the master plan,” Alazar said.
As the argument continued the other two road projects that has been given a decision by the Mayor were Abo roundabout to Bisrate Gebriel roundabout and road at Megenegna where 40/60 condominiums are being constructed at Ehil Nigd area. At the latter site, the parking area of a G+7 hotel will be demolished; Part of the property of another G+6 building will become a designated arcade, providing safety for pedestrians in a highly congested area. This decision is what spared the demolition of the building. At Bisrate Gebriel area, the road will require the demolition of houses in front of a mosque to spare the fence of the mosque.
“When we start a project to design and construct a certain road, we conduct a study the area that it is all clear or should legally be cleared. However with a year between design and the start of construction huge buildings are erected, having received the land either from the district or city administrator. This kind of dispute might not happen if they communicate with us whether the road is under design or not,” said Tibebu.
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