What about rail & water transport

The World Bank (WB) early last week announced that it had approved a concessionary loan of $1.2 billion to Ghana, of which $535 million is ready for disbursement this year, after parliament has consented to the deal. Out of the $535 million, $225 million is going to finance the transport sector development programme of the government.

These are the construction of the Tarkwa-Ayamfuri road in Western region, construction of Burma Camp roads and building of bus terminal for the proposed urban transport development.

No where was it mentioned that the rail and water transport are also going to be beneficiaries of this facility, and this is where The Chronicle has a problem with the government. It appears to us that since Dr. Kwame Nkrumah left the political scene decades ago, all successive governments have been paying lip service to rail and water transport in the country. Meanwhile, this is the cheapest means of traveling in this modern world.

Canada is more than half the size of Africa and yet it has network of rail lines connecting all the major cities. Like in the US and European cities, all the cities in Canada have effective rail system that ensures easy movement of commuters.

Between Helsinki and Stockholm, in Finland and Sweden respectively, they are also making effective use of a water body that is between them. They have a cruise ship that leaves Helsinki at 5pm and arrives the following morning at Stockholm and vice versa. Another example is the Eurostar rail way service between England and France which passes under the English Channel, the water body between England and France. Because this means of transport is cheap and also safe, it is well patronized.

The Chronicle concedes that Ghana is a developing country and cannot therefore compare herself to the countries that we have mentioned, but a journey of thousand miles begins with a step.

Canada, USA and other countries did not build these infrastructures in just one or two years. It took them a long time to achieve that so why can't we also start planning now towards the building of infrastructure for our rail and water transport instead of the current over concentration on roads?

As we write this article, traffic management in our big towns and cities, especially in Accra and Kumasi, is in a complete mess. The more government constructs roads in these cities, the more people import cars for use on these roads, thus constantly blocking the free flow traffic. This alone should have sounded a caution to our leaders that there is the need to shift our attention to rail and water transport, but that might not be what we are thinking about now as a nation.

We have on several occasions suggested in this column that we can use the middle of our dual carriage roads in the cities to construct rail lines for urban transportation. Looking at the current design, the government can use the middle of the road to construct a rail line from Kasoa in the central region, which has become part of Accra, all the way to La Hospital.

Even if we are to use trams on this line, it would help workers to get to their work places early, because it would not compete with cars for space.

In a similar vain, we can also encourage the use of ferries from Accra to the north by using the Volta river which passes through Ada.

The world is fast changing, therefore, if we do not come out with the right strategies, we will always be left behind in economic development. To the white man, time is precious, but to us on this side of the world, we do not see anything wrong if the worker wastes so many hours in traffic before getting to his or her place of work.

Building of roads is not a bad idea, but over concentration on that sector to the detriment of other sectors is what we are against. We hope that the policy makers would listen to us and start developing our rail sector too, which would help contribute to the growth of our economy.