Wall the motorway now

The 18km four-track highway, commonly known as the Motorway, linking Tema township to Accra – the capital- is a vital national asset that demands attention and every effort to protect it and ensure safety conditions for its varied users – both local and transnational motorists and travellers.

This roadway constitutes a relatively traffic-free and the quickest link to Accra and it environs. It is one of the major infrastructure assets that make modern, Tema township beside the industries, harbour and beautiful housing environment.

It is a key and less stressful but speed dominated portion of the Lagos – Abidjan trunk road. It cuts across some of the most prestigious residential and active industrial suburbs of Accra and Tema. It is a straight, unimpeded route constructed without crossroads, aside a flyover and two underpasses.

This corridor was designed to host and channel multiple vehicular traffic over a considerable stretch within the shortest possible time. The motorway is an expensive asset and was designed and constructed to withstand the vagaries of the weather aside the expected rugged demand on it by various types and sizes of private vehicles and commercial trucks mostly from the Tema Harbour.

Lately, the safety of the numerous users of this highway – motorists, travellers and adjoining residents – had been called into question. Unsafe conditions, abuse, wrong use and vulnerability of users resulting in tragic outcomes on the motorway have and continue to prompt various calls for immediate action to ensure safety provisions.

This is urgent to prevent this key roadway losing it basic purpose and advantage – the shortest, convenient and quickest multi-track vehicular transportation access from the eastern corridor to the nation’s capital. There is the need for a solid fence along both sides of the entire stretch of the motorway from Tema Motorway Roundabout to Tetteh Quarshie Interchange. This proposition arises from a major precedent.

Presently the Weija River which traverses Ga West up to the Ga South municipalities provides water to feed the GWCL Weija headworks for treatment and distribution to eastern Accra. The entire river is to be walled over a considerable distance at an astronomical cost.

The argument is that water is very vital to human sustenance hence this necessary but expensive option. The justification for this decision arises from the uncontrolled and aggressive encroachment engulfing the Weija River catchment area – a frightening phenomenon which may not abate in the foreseeable future, judging from the weak posture of local authorities mandated to arrest this situation.

In the same vein, the state of our transportation infrastructure and related safety systems, with the motorway high on the national road asset, register is equally crucial to the people of the Accra- Tema region.

The motorway hosts thousands of vehicles in a year, Should this route be shut or eventually become very unsafe to use, an unprecedented chaos along the alternate routes is a sure bet, aside the huge economic and social impact such development may unleash.

The perspective here is that if the GWCL can source such a colossal amount to undertake the protection of a natural water body, then this revenue generating highway can be managed with a slight increase in the daily road toll to easily rake in enough to see through this option of a boundary wall project. Controversial as this option may seem, other crucial factors buttress this call. What are some of these concerns? In other words why this call and why now!

The motorway, as provided for on the original master plan has an average width of 180metres with the existing four-lane motorable track occupying just about 60metres. The remaining 120metres shared on both sides is in serious danger of formal and informal encroachment.

More worrying is the fact that these structures are mushrooming to the motorable track as close as 9 metres away. The population of Terna and its adjoining communities and settlements from Ashaiman to Aflao and Akosombo are likely to multiply in the near future, a situation which is bound to result in road expansion works.

Expected addition of two to four new parrellel motorable tracks would depend upon the available land reservations now under threat of encroachment.

The disturbing revelation here is the fact that the deals or sale of lands related to the physical structures stretching into these reservations has the conspicuous hand of public land-related departments the very public agencies responsible for protecting this national asset.

In a situation where an acre of land abutting this highway is going for not less than $500,000.00, the intense scramble for land along the motorway is not surprising and may not cease soon. The extensive encroachment on acquired state lands across the country as a result of the virtual weakness of the relevant state institutions reinforces this call since powerful interest groups lurk behind the incidence of uncontrolled physical development within our urban environment.

The concern here is the frightening rate of encroachment fostered by the juicy packages that go with the sale of lands in prime areas such as those along the motorway.

Unlike the recent past where a single or two local authorities could be held responsible and made to take appropriate and timely action in arresting the encroachment situation, the scenario is now different. Accra and Tema metropolitan authorities, Ledzorkuku-Krowor, Ashaiman and Adenta municipalities each has jurisdictional control of this road – a situation fragmenting the supervisory role with its attendant problems.

The sides of this elaborate route was planned without direct access to or from adjoining properties. It was also not meant to provide for vehicle waiting areas or lay-bys. An unfolding but worrying situation where workers from adjoining industrial and construction sites congregate alongside, jostle and criss-cross this busy road in dangerous ways to disembark or board vehicles create potent accident situations.

Such increasing human presence, including area livestock population, especially cattle criss-crossing such a highspeed artery has occasioned fatal accidents affecting innocent travellers. Whatever checks or enforcement approaches that are put in place, the increasing adjoining community population would definitely use this road in numbers; a situation likely to put a strain on existing and future safety precautions applied to stem the hazards along this corridor.

An equally worrying development affecting this highway is the growing and almost daily incidence of attacks on motorists and travellers by highway robbers largely from adjoining settlements and squatter enclaves.

Many users of this road have chilling and painful stories to recount about ordeals they have gone through. Until the recent street lighting project – the whole length of the motorway had courted darkness over the years. Since robbers and darkness are bedmates, this roadway constitutes a comfortable operational base for their activities.

Without defined emergency stopovers the motorway, clothed in constant darkness, lacking emergency motorist relief systems and without a regular police patrol presence and as a lonely or quiet stretch particularly in the night, any unfortunate vehicle breakdown or emergency stopover made by motorist along this stretch after 6:30 p.m. signals a sure hellish encounter with organised robbers lurking in the adjoining bushes. The mere presence of a broken-down vehicle is a wave of hand offered by a fresh prey to be devoured.

This writer had a brush with these gangs on two occasions. It was a near death experience. The brandishing of their frightening operational tools of guns and machetes, in the pitch darkness without any sign of help is more than a visit by the victim to hell and back.

In such circumstances men become women in order to protect their dear life. Many however have not gone through such situations unscathed. Most survived with deep scars whilst the trauma of others forbade the use of the motorway in any way and at anytime.

Again, unauthorised side entry and exit roads into the motorway and illegal U-turns have caused several accidents in the past. This has not abated despite many past efforts to curtail such untoward practices. Past gory accidents usually prompt an immediate response from the authorities but in a situation where enforcement is not sustained these problems recur later with fatalities.

The uncontrolled presence of huge advertising hoardings on the shoulder of this highway is equally unsafe and frightening with rainstorm now and then mangling these structures. Instead of having these structures improperly sited, mounted and maintained – the facades of the proposed wall could be sourced out to interested organizations for advertising agencies to brand. For a lesser fee these agencies can be tasked to landscape and maintain such sections of the motorway.

Aside highway workers and a few others, the confines of the proposed walled section of the motorway should be a ‘no-go’ area and any one found loitering for no apparent reason should be arrested, especially in the night. To provide a more convenient and easy link between the north-western end and the south-eastern portions of this highway, two new flyovers should be considered to replace the recently demolished unsafe one. The traffic build-up around the two underpasses can be eased if the proposed parallel roadway on the western side of the motorway running from around Ashaiman to Shiashi is given serious attention.

Credit: Arc. S.Y Akoto [The author is an architect]
(E-mail:syakoto2000@yahoo.com0