People & Lifestyle
Guest Blog: Decongesting vehicular traffic in Accra
When it comes to mobility, conducting business within accra either involving to accomplished daily task routine, work, business, delivery, or shopping etc doing that in accra city can be very frustrating and thus can Rob you of your precious time you could have invested into other profitable or relaxing ventures.
In this blog post we will share and brain storm some causes of road congestion and possible solutions to relief our roads of vehicular constipation. Before we dive in let check out some facts about accra and what could be the reason behind the serious traffic situation on our roads
- what is the population of motor-vehicles on our roads
- Is there any vehicular motor restriction in the city
- Examining the roads networks and infrastructure within the city
- Do government have to build more roads
When examining the traffic congestion situation in the city one thing is notable and relatable every time traffic situation pops-up which is peak hours traffic situation which is generally between week days from about 6:30am – 8:30am and between 5:30pm -8:00pm on week days, however this peak hours traffic situation may not always the true situation on ground always.
Other notable reason are bad roads/potholes, faulty vehicles in the middle of traffic, poor road networks, implosion of long vehicles -cargo vehicles on the roads at odd hours,
HOW GOVERNMENT CAN REGULATE MOTOR-VEHICULAR MOVEMENT TO EASE TRAFFIC CONGESTION
Vehicular motorists as used here in this article refers to all kind of vehicles either four wheel, long vehicle, tricycle, bike anything form motorists that move on our roads except pedestrian, now we can now group all this into segment such as follows:
- passengers vehicles
- delivery and courier motorists
- light load trucks
- heavy duty, long cargo vehicles
- super heavy/ oversized long vehicles
Now under the passenger vehicle we have private vehicles, commercial buses(trotro), taxis ( ulber, bolt and all app based rides), now we can further deduce that a passenger vehicles move inter- city and intra-city.
- What if we enact law that gives vehicles moving inter-city priority road access while vehicles moving intra-city time schedules in order to help decongest the city
Delivery and courier services motorist within inter City classes of goods, goods to be delivered should be parcel and any form of light goods. Light load truck this category, involved vehicles such as trucks, tipper trucks long vehicles etc
Super heavy duty load delivery vehicles, this category involves unusual load delivery or oversized loads which in order sense cannot move beyond 35km/h
PURPOSE OF SEGMENTATION
The purpose of segmenting all the types of motorist moving on our roads is to define and allocate timing schedules for all motorist especially for heavy and super heavy vehicles. Since peak hours is usually flooded with passenger vehicles giving passenger vehicles priority road access during this time will ease traffic congestion while other none passenger vehicle can move other hours except peak hours, also vehicles moving inter-city and intra-city should be harmonised.
Accra Road networks
Accra is a fascinating city which so much to do, fun, business, hospitality or social life affairs but one thing that could hinder this is mobility, Accra development and planning was largely carried out by private home owners and land owners in which most cases an ideal futuristic planning was not put in place leading poor road networks, note poor road networks is not the same as building roads infrastructure, poor road networks works simply refers to the inability for motorist to find other roads acces leading to their destination. City authorities needs to ensure that enough road networks linking communities, inter- City and intra City are created to ease traffic situation in the city without enough road networks government can spend more on road expansion and infrastructure and yet traffic situation won’t ease.
