The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Roads and Transport Committee, Kennedy Nyarko Osei, has called for a comprehensive overhaul of the transport system in Greater Accra, arguing that simply adding more buses will not solve the capital’s worsening congestion.
Speaking to Starr News on the commencement of the Greater Accra Passenger Transport Executive (GAPTE) contra-flow bus priority system for Aayalolo services, Mr Osei stressed that rapid population growth, rising private vehicle ownership and the occupation of potential road corridors have left the city with limited space and severe traffic bottlenecks.
“It is not only about getting enough buses to deal with the system, we need a complete overhaul of our transport system within the capital city.
“The population keeps increasing, people are also occupying a lot of the spaces where we could have created more access routes for more vehicles to apply. So you can see even with the few vehicles that we have within the capital city, look at how they struggle in traffic before they get to their destination,” he said.
The comments come as GAPTE begins operating a pilot contra-flow bus priority system on major corridors into Accra’s central business district.
The arrangement, which started on Tuesday, 29 September 2026, allows authorised Ayalolo buses to use dedicated lanes against the normal flow of traffic during peak hours (approximately 6:00–9:00 a.m. inbound and 4:00–8:00 p.m. outbound) on selected routes including Amasaman, Pokuase/Adentan and Kasoa corridors.
Mr Osei also advocated a stronger shift away from near-total dependence on road vehicles toward an expanded internal rail system, including trams, to accommodate growing demand.
He urged engineers and planners to redesign the city’s mobility network through additional arterial roads, interchanges, express lanes and other measures.
“This is the time for the engineers to sit down, crack their brains, re-engineer how we can create more access routes whether by arterial roads, whether by interchanges, whether by express lanes, I mean within the capital city,” he stated.
“A lot of people now own vehicles, all of them are using this limited space that we have. We should move away from just depending on just vehicles and also look at how we can beef up our train system, I mean internal rail system by trams and whatever it takes to be able to accommodate or address the increasing traffic thing because it’s not going to go away anytime soon.”
GAPTE, the inter-metropolitan body responsible for planning, regulating and coordinating public passenger transport in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, operates the Ayalolo Quality Bus Service.
The contra-flow pilot follows traffic simulation exercises involving the Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service, the Department of Urban Roads and other stakeholders.
Officials project significant reductions in peak-hour journey times on the selected corridors.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
