BY Godwin Oritse
NO fewer than 12million residents of Lagos State traveled through the waterways between January and July 2013, the latest ridership of the Lagos State Waterways Authority has revealed.
The ridership also showed that out of the over 20million currently residing in Lagos State ,more than 1.8million presently use the waterways to move in and around the city on a monthly basis.
This is contained in a recently released Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) ridership statistics which has recorded an increase of over a 100 percent in three years.

The ridership is a statistical data used by the Lagos State Waterways Authority to monitor the number of commutesr that use the state waterways to move within Lagos.
From a mere 494,010 ridership in June 2010, the ridership as a July 2013 has gone up to 1.8million, a development that has reduced pressure on the roads.
A breakdown of the ridership showed that there has been a progressive increase in the number of people that travel by water on a monthly basis.
As at January 2013, a total of 1.103million as against 481,745 people in 2012 used the waterways .
For the months of February and March 2013, 1.471million and 1.545million were recorded respectively, while that month of April saw a total of 1.671million people using the waterway for that month.
The figures for the months of February, March and April 2012 stood at 892,456, 1.212,768 and 1.560,182 people used the waterways last year.
For May, June, July and August 2013, the figure stood at 1.671million 852,653,1.8million and 1.7million as against 1.3 million May 2012, 1.2million 1.7million,and 1.1million respectively for the period under review.

As at the time of filling this report, Vanguard could not get the figures for the months of September, October and November as their result were still being expected from LASWA officials at the various terminals across the state.
A source close to the authority told Vanguard that the ridership could be as high as two million going by the steady increase of the number of people to have opted to travel by water over the years.
Meanwhile, the state government have concluded plans to commence the concessioning of the four major terminals with a view to providing more efficient and safe water transportation in the state.
Already, investors have expressed and have submitted their bid for that purpose.