A Dissertation Submitted to the Institute of Development Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Award of the Degree of Master of Science in Development Policy (MSc. DP) of Mzumbe University.
This study was conducted in order to identify the social impacts of traffic jam in Dar es Salaam City. A case study design was applied to obtain primary data from the unit of enquiry. Also various methods of data collection such as in depth interview, administered questionnaire and documentary review were applied. Simple random sampling was adopted to select 46 respondents from which data was collected. The findings showed that traffic jam exists and it is a major problem to the commuters in Dar es Salaam city. According to the study, about 78.3% spend more than two to three hours on traffic jam. Some of the causes for traffic jam were said to be poor roads, increased number of cars and location of many offices at one place, lack of parking places as well as poor traffic management. On the other side, traffic jam was found to have the following impacts on health. This includes spread of diseases such as airborne diseases and fainting just to mention few. At family level, traffic jam has led to misunderstanding among family members, separation and divorce and lack of time for parents to be with their children. At community level, traffic jam contributes to poor relation among communities due to lack of time to participate in social affairs, reduced visitation, late arrival of fire and rescue tracks during the occurrence of disasters in the community and late arrival at work or school. In order to eliminate traffic jam in Dar es Salaam city, the following recommendations were made: improving the current infrastructures including construction of flyovers, reallocation of offices and services from the city center, establishment of other means of transport such as train and water transport. This report was presented in five chapters, chapter one covered introduction of the study, chapter two, literature review, chapter three, research methodology, chapter four, presentation and discussion of the research findings and chapter five, the conclusions and recommendations.