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Tonami Playman Profile picture
Tonami Playman
@TonamiPlayman
For the love of Data, Transit, and Energy
2 subscribers
Jun 24 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
The cost of Grid Solar PV + Battery Storage has dropped so low that most African cities can meet more than 90% of their annual electricity needs with only Solar + Storage. The Shortfall can be met by other sources like Hydro, Coal, or Gas. The dramatic drop in CAPEX is mainly due to the drop in battery systems costs, which dropped by 40% between 2023 & 2024 due to the proliferation of LFP chemistry.

Further cost reductions are expected as 2nd Gen Sodium-ion batteries reach mass production.

Apr 20 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
There are a few ways to discern if someone is being realistic of just blowing smoke.

1st, the shortest road distance between Enugu & Onne is 232km. How does a 135.5km new SGR line connect Enugu to Onne port? Image 2nd, in the current Nigerian frame work, a state-owned entity cannot build a railway in another state.

How does Enugu build a railway that goes through several other states without their input? Image
Apr 10 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
This is an amazing job and the most detail we've ever gotten on a LAMATA rail project. First off, I would like to point out that for an official govt organization, approving a voice over that butchers 100% of the pronunciation of the name is high level cringe. This is not just a LAMATA problem, but a general problem across both public & private entities in Nigeria. We have no right to complain when foreigners butcher our names when we can't even take it seriously for official presentations.
Mar 3 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
I would love to see what the actual map of this Anambra state rail mater plan looks like.

Going by the description, this is the route that I deduce. Without seeing the actual map, this is my critique of this plan. I would update it once I see the official route map. Image This proposed route would be about 65km long. If one is thinking about building a rail corridor that can seamlessly integrate into a national rail network for both passenger & freight traffic, this is a terrible alignment. Image
Feb 18 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
We love deceiving ourselves in Nigeria. Ever so often we get wild claims like this.

Let me make this clear...

...There's no bullet train revolution about to happen in Nigeria for a Lagos-Abuja HSR for a few reasons highlighted below. Image Link to article here.

guardian.ng/news/lagos-abu…
Jan 21 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
I noticed LAMATA has updated the Lagos Urban Rail Masterplan. Image If we compare this to the earlier maps from the 2010s,

-they've eliminated the shared track section between the Orange & Purple lines from Redeem to Toll Gate.

- Eliminated the shared section on the Purple & Blue lines from LASU to Okokomaiko. Image
Dec 4, 2024 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
A good update on the status of the Lagos Blue Line Phase 2 construction.

The 14km Blue line extension from Mile 2 to Okokomaiko has 6 stations and is scheduled to be completed in 2026. At the 16:50 mark The LAMATA director stated the completed 27km line would carry 250k to 500k daily riders and at the 17:17 mark, he stated they would have 250k daily riders at the start in 2026.

Nov 30, 2024 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
The actual active section of the Lagos Red line is 24.5km with 8 stations, so a 3.5km station spacing. For a commuter line, that is an actually good spacing.

What's not clearly understood is the different hierarchies of metro lines. Image In Lagos, the Red line & Blue line are in different categories, despite both of them just being referred to as metro by @Lamataonline

The Red line is a longer range suburban line which usually have ~4km station spacing.

The Blue line is an urban line which usually have ~1km
Nov 12, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
This concession plan is DOA. The Lagos Blue only carries 4,500 passengers per day, a number that is less than most regular bus services.

It would need significant upfront investment in the procurement of new trains. Yet you want a for-profit private entity to run it. 49 of the 127 CTA bus lines in Chicago carry more passengers than the Lagos blue line's 4,500 daily average, and those are not BRT.

rtams.org/ridership/cta/…Image
Oct 27, 2024 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Considering Kenya's 4 major truck traffic corridors;

Nairobi-Mombasa - 483km
Nairobi-Kisumu - 342km
Nairobi-Marsabit - 531km
Nairobi-Garissa - 367km

All are within 500km range. A DC charging network would need 3 charging locations along each corridor. Image
Image
Image
Image This is based on the assumption of 500kWh as the median truck battery size.

A 500kWh truck @ 70% utilization & 1.3kWh/km efficiency would have a range of 270km and charge from 10-80% on a 500kW charger in 45-50 mins.

So a charging location every 250km is sufficient.
Oct 4, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
This false rhetoric has been playing for so long that Gemini AI presents it as fact.

Site - Atlantic Dist - Channel draft

Lekki Port - 0NM - 16m
Onne - 19NM - 12m
Apapa - 19NM - 12m
Obeaku - 27Nm - 4-6m
Port Harcourt Port - 31NM - 10m
Calabar Port - 34NM - 6m Image How can anyone look at a map and make such a blatantly false conclusion?

This situation also highlights the problems with AI search. If people write enough rubbish online that ends up being used to train the LLM, it's going to be spewing out rubbish too.

Sep 8, 2024 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
The entire 68km Lagos Green line is planned to have only 10 stations according to the official masterplan.

If they stick to the plan and don't add more stations, this will create a very unusable line.

Thanks to @chriskost for bringing this to my attention.
Image Here I compare the station spacing to 2 express metro systems.

Lagos Green Line - 68km - 10 Stns - 7.5km spacing
BART Green Line - 70km - 20 Stns - 3.7km spacing
Guangzhou Line 21 - 61.5km - 21 Stns - 3km spacing

Sep 7, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The Onne Oil & Gas Free Zone was established in 1996. The Rivers State govt should have pushed to expand the zone to include manufacturing, There're readily available gas pipelines that can serve power plants to guarantee 24/7 electricity for the zone.
Image Link

intelservices.com/oil-gas-free-z…
Sep 6, 2024 • 18 tweets • 7 min read
Based on the official low res LAMATA map ( I used to have a link to the high res version, but it no longer works), this is my best guess of what the Lagos green line alignment could look like.

Image
Image From Marina, it would follow Ahmadu Bello Way, then turn unto Adeola Odeku St.

There's ample room to build the line elevated through this section. They would have to decide between acquiring land from Bonny cam or demolishing the flyover to accommodate the viaduct. Image
Aug 30, 2024 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Instead of clamouring for new deep sea ports, the E & SS states should be working together to strengthen the transport links to Onne Port.

This proposed freight rail corridor is 254km long from Onne port to Onitsha with 4 ICDs at Aba, Owerri, & Onitsha. Image This follows the proposed PHC-Enugu railway corridor. 84km of the freight rail corridor would be a mixed double track section shared with Passenger service.

Aug 27, 2024 • 19 tweets • 7 min read
For those who are still wedded to the misguided idea that ports generating economic activity instead of ports going where it already exists, let's take a look at the history of the Lagos port complex.

A🧵 Image In the late 19th century, Lagos, being the site of the first organized modern government in what would become Nigeria, attracted people seeking refuge from the Yoruba civil wars.

This led to a 64% population growth between 1866 & 1870.

sahistory.org.za/sites/default/…
Image
Aug 23, 2024 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
1st off, no $3.5bn loan has been secured for this port.

Second, no financial institution is going to put up that amount of money for a project with such low viability. As @NagosBigBoi highlighted below, the agreement was for a project preparation facility.

The signed agreement was for an Afreximbank Project Preparation Facility (APPF)

Aug 6, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This was inevitable. The Kenyan market is too small to support auto manufacturing for domestic consumption. The entire African market is smaller than most countries.

If you're not making cars for export outside Africa like Morocco & SA, you're destined to fail. The entire African car market is less than 2 million units & fragmented. ASEAN does 3.5m. Australia with 1.2m units couldn't support auto manufacturing for domestic consumption. The govt gave up after decades of fruitless subsidies.

Aug 4, 2024 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
For SE Nigeria this is what the rail network should look like. The alignments fit into a national network, but if the states have the will, they can build the sections that run within their state boundaries.
Image Of course I'm not holding my breadth that Nigerian state govts will actually do this, but in the likelihood that they choose to proceed, The corridors highlighted in red run through all the SE state.

The main corridor, PHC-Aba-Owerri-Onitsha-Enugu should be the priority #1. Image
Jul 26, 2024 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
There's a lot of latent demand on the Lagos-Ibadan corridor, but the line is far from having a high number of passengers in its current iteration. The trains might look full and will constantly run into tight booking challenges, but that's expected especially when you only run 2 trains a day in an 8hr window on a double track corridor.

Jul 23, 2024 • 24 tweets • 15 min read
This may not be known by many, but contract manufacturing within the auto industry is as old as the industry itself.

Follow me on this trip down the hallways of automotive history. 🧵
Image The Coachbuilding Era:

At the dawn of the automotive industry, most automotive manufacturers only produced a rolling chassis which the customer purchases & pays a coachbuilder to build the shell over the chassis. Image