Vehicular traffic has several side effects including stress, loss of productive time hours, increased emissions leading to air pollution, and even could cause accidents due to excessive pressure on drivers to dodge traffic. This article seeks to scrutinize how the traffic situation affects productive hours and how it can be solved in Ghana.
In busy cities, one thing that decreases productivity hours at most workplaces is the vehicular traffic on our roads. In fact, research by the author has revealed that almost an average of three hours of productive hours are lost in Ghana’s vehicular traffic. As it is said, time is money and so any time lost in traffic is money wasted.
Per recent research, every road user in Accra wastes productive man-hours of 10ghs each day in traffic translating to 3650ghs annually. In addition, historical records have shown that the total number of estimated registered vehicles at the Accra office of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA) for 2019 and 2020 was 710,971 and 915,391 respectively.
Per statistics reports, the Greater Accra Region where Accra is located had the highest number of registered vehicles at 1.1million and this means that the country loses an average of 3,65billion GHS annually due to vehicular traffic in Accra.
It is bizarre that the country has ignored solving our traffic congestion and rather diverted attention towards raising more revenues when we are already losing more than 3billion GHS. This amount wasted can do so much for the country in terms of hospitals, road construction, and other projects.
Research has revealed that the cause of the traffic situation in Ghana can be attributed to the poor road infrastructure as well as wrong usage by some road users and pedestrians.
In recent times, vehicular traffic is even more extreme on three main roads in Accra namely the Accra to Pokuase road, Kasoa to Kaneshie Road, and the Accra to Spintex road. The question is what we are doing about this terrible traffic situation on these roads. The traffic in these areas has not been managed completely even though the removal of the toll booths in Kasoa seemed to have solved part of the issues.
How does the country eradicate vehicular traffic on our roads? Can various authorities meet to dialogue to breed solutions to the traffic situation in Accra? It is recommended that road authorities should take a second look at the road infrastructure network to provide more alternatives for road users to reach their destinations on time and safely.
The writer is a Chartered Accountant (a member of ICAG), a management expert, and a part-time lecturer at Regent University College of Science and Technology His email address is [email protected].
