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Ghana’s Road Traffic Problem:  Can It Be Fixed?

Feature Article Ghanas Road Traffic Problem: Can It Be Fixed?
AUG 23, 2017 LISTEN

Ever run into dead-stop-bumper-to-bumper cars in any of our cities’ roads?

Or have you wondered why the roads aren’t built big or bigger just like those abroad say in the United States or China?

And is it true that building bigger roads create traffic?

A commuter recently made this observation: “I’m not an expert yet whilst sitting in the traffic I observed there was enough room for the traffic problem to be solved. I think it’s robbing the nation of business time.”

Mary had been caught up in Accra’s heavy traffic—a city whose vehicular and human population are increasingly jostling for space on a daily basis. But where in the city did this happen? It was on the John Atta Mills High Street near Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and not far from the historic Christianborg Castle. Eerily, she observed, the pedestrians’ walkway was bigger than the actual pavement. That’s right!

So, I’m appealing to the authorities in Ghana i.e. the roads and highway ministry and government to consider this humble appeal:

“How much space do our legs need to walk in a straight line when there’s enough room for an orderly crowd to walk?” Mary asked.

Without a doubt commuting during rush hours in Accra, Ghana, Lagos or Ibadan, Nigeria or Johannesburg, South Africa can be more than insane. The build-up starts right from one’s point of departure and it bleeds all along to the destination point, for example if you live close by a freeway linking the major highway or arteries. Ironically, none of the cities afore named found itself in FORBES’ March 2016 World’s most heavy traffic cities.

Yes, they couldn’t and didn’t match the heavy weights. They were conspicuously missing in the world top ten rankings. But isn’t that good news for us? That means our traffic situation or problem hasn’t perhaps reached the cascading levels yet. It means we can do something about it. That means it’s better late than never. And if we stitch it in time we might as well save nine. We won’t find ourselves in the precipice

So, this is just to give you a fair idea of what’s trending elsewhere regarding traffic congestion:

Here’s TomTom's (one of Forbes’ contributors) list of the 10 global cities where the commutes are most brutal or worst. Also it includes estimates an average motorist spends sitting in traffic; for example, if congestion causes commuters to spend 30 minutes getting to or from the office, compared to 20 minutes for the same trip taken during times of free-moving traffic, then the daily delay amounts to 50%.

Mexico City tops the list with 59% extra travel time (morning peak 97%; evening peak 94%). She’s followed by Bangkok: 57% extra travel time (morning peak 85%; evening peak 114%) and then

Istanbul: 50% extra travel time (morning peak 62%; evening peak 94%).

Brazil city Rio de Janeiro: 47% extra travel time (morning peak 66%; evening peak 79%).

While Moscow: 44% extra travel time (morning peak 71%; evening peak 91%). The Eastern European city is followed by a sister city-- Bucharest: 43% extra travel time (morning peak 83%; evening peak 87%). Central American city Salvador: 43% extra travel time (morning peak 67%; evening peak 74%).

And the rest are Recife: 43% extra travel time (morning peak 72%; evening peak 75%). Chengdu: 41% extra travel time (morning peak 73%; evening peak 81%) and Los Angeles: crowns the list with 41% extra travel time (morning peak 60%; evening peak 81%. Jim Gorzelany was one of the contributors too.

Can Ghana fix its traffic problem?
Ghana built its premier highway or motorway in the early 1960’s. And that stretch connects the nation’s capital Accra and the Habour City-Tema both in the Greater Accra region. How many lanes two or three, I stand to be corrected?

Several decades after that ambitious project by Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah most of the country’s trunk roads had been mostly single lanes until 2008 when the motorway extension also known as N1 was constructed. Is it true that the bigger the road the better?

By many standards that’s true. And I think most of us can attest to that. Over the years we’ve seen the Tema Motorway play that distinct role and none of the roads constructed decades after its birth can compare. So of course Ghana can fix its road traffic problem but there are several factors other than building bigger roads, over heads and what have you. Nonetheless, building multiple lanes has more advantage than single lanes.

So could that be a factor?
Yes and no. Yes, l if a country fails to build dual carriages, flyovers or double-deckers or expand its road networks the effect could be brutal. When you have double or multiple lanes the roads can accommodate many vehicles. But you see, that isn’t a full-proof case or panacea to traffic problem. Because cities like Los Angles has all that yet they’re reeling in traffic congestion as shown above.

I should remind myself that correlation does not mean causation. I used to wonder and still haven’t stopped wondering why our engineers couldn’t build more lanes. Maybe that could transform them all into double-decker highways with cars zooming on the upper and lower levels.

But road experts think otherwise. One expert posits that: “If there’s anything that traffic engineers have discovered in the last few decades it’s that you can’t build your way out of congestion. It’s the roads themselves that cause traffic.”

Does that make sense?
In 2009, two economists—Matthew Turner of the University of Toronto , Canada and Gilles Duranton of the University of Pennsylvania, USA—decided to compare the number of new roads and highways built in different U.S. cities between 1980 and 2000, and the total number of miles driven in those cities over the same period.

“We found that there’s this perfect one-to-one relationship,” said Turner.

If a city had increased its road capacity by 10 percent between 1980 and 1990, then the amount of driving in that city went up by 10 percent. If the amount of roads in the same city then went up by 11 percent between 1990 and 2000, the total number of miles driven also went up by 11 percent. It’s like the two figures were moving in perfect lockstep, changing at the same exact rate.”

According to the social scientists: “The answer has to do with what roads allow people to do: move around. As it turns out, we humans love moving around. And if you expand people’s ability to travel, they will do it more, living farther away from where they work and therefore being forced to drive into town. Making driving easier also means that people take more trips in the car than they otherwise would. Finally, businesses that rely on roads will swoop into cities with many of them, bringing trucking and shipments. The problem is that all these things together erode any extra capacity you’ve built into your street network, meaning traffic levels stay pretty much constant. As long as driving on the roads remains easy and cheap, people have an almost unlimited desire to use them,” they contended.

How do we deal with congestion on our roads?
According to studies congestion pricing has been tried successfully in places like London, Stockholm, and Singapore. Other cities are starting to look at it as a solution. Legislators in New York rejected a plan for congestion pricing in New York City in 2008 and San Francisco periodically toys with introducing the idea in downtown. Nobody wants to pay for something that was previously free, even if it would be in their best interests to do so.

Duranton said that if congestion pricing is a non-starter, a more rational approach to parking could be a good secondary step in easing congestion. Parking in most cities is far cheaper than it should be, and it’s too often free.

“Because it’s free, people will misuse it and it will be full all the time,” said Duranton. Drivers searching for parking contribute significantly to road congestion. “There are some estimates that say in the central part of cities up to 30 percent of driving is people just cruising around for parking,” Duranton said.

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