Spatial and Land Use Planner Dr Benedict Arkhurst has blamed Ghana’s persistent transport challenges on inconsistent government priorities and the failure to sustain long-term plans across successive administrations.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Friday, August 28, during the Joy Sustainability Month programme on Ghana’s trotro revolution and the case for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), Dr Arkhurst said the country had already developed several comprehensive strategies to address congestion and improve public transportation.
He said the difficulty was ensuring that those plans remained a priority when governments changed.
According to him, transport master plans developed over the past decade had identified the causes of congestion and proposed measures to address them, but implementation had often been disrupted by changing political priorities.
He noted that governments typically translate their own manifesto commitments into policy, sometimes overlooking strategies inherited from previous administrations.
Dr Arkhurst said the emphasis on major road projects also illustrated the gap between infrastructure expansion and the need for efficient urban public transport.
He argued that expanding roads alone would not adequately address congestion within cities unless it was accompanied by measures to improve public transportation.
Ghana already has several long-term planning frameworks, including a national transportation master plan, the Greater Accra Regional Spatial Development Framework and the National Spatial Development Framework, which provides a 20-year vision for transportation development.
Dr Arkhurst therefore called for greater policy continuity, stressing that successive governments should build on existing transport strategies rather than repeatedly changing direction with each administration.
