GA central gears up toward Bus Rapid Transit

The Ga Central Municipal Assembly in preparation towards the implementation of the Bus Rapid Transit in the last of the many meetings they have held with the various Transport Unions and other transport stake-holders in the assembly to reach common grounds on how the policy is going to be implemented to the benefits of truck owners and the general public.

Represented by all the unions and stakeholders of the transportation business in the Assembly, they called on the Assembly to improve on the various which serves as access roads when there is traffic congestion on the major roads.

They also pleaded with the Assembly to regulate the sales of stickers and identify a single outlet in the Assembly as the sole sales point and follow that up with more sophisticated features on the stickers to ensure that fraudulent people do not keep selling fake ones for innocent drivers and vehicle owners as has been the practice.

Addressing the concerns of the Drivers Unions, the Municipal Chief Executive of the area, Mr Aristo Aryee assured them that the Assembly will work on the roads to ensure that they are motorable .

He added that, due to the limited resources, the Assembly was not in the position to upgrade all the road so the drivers should assist the Assembly identify those they use frequently to be given priority treatment whilst the assembly takes time to work on the remaining ones.

He also said that the Assembly would put measure in place to ensure that the sales of stickers become unattractive for fraudulent people.

With the implementation of the Bus Rapid Transit, truck drivers would not be able to stop by the road to pick passengers and it would also mean that the many bus stops that have been turned to mini station will have to give way for free flowing transportation.

In view of this, the Assembly agreed with the drivers to create avenues for drivers to load passengers without interfering with moving vehicles.

Here, drivers will be permitted to make turn and also load passengers where there are access roads that are not busy.

“Instead of the drivers standing by the roads and sometimes in the middle to load, they would be required to make turns where there are access roads that have been identified for that purpose.

The Bus Rapid Transit will serve a radial arterial route running from the outskirts of Accra to the central business district. It is expected to service over 12,000 peak hour passenger journeys per direction of travel with bus frequencies of 120 buses per hour at peak periods. New large buses will replace the existing small buses in the corridor and the overall travel time is expected to be 25 minutes compared with over an hour today.

The implementation of the Bus Rapid Transit will begin on the 1st of October 2013 and the Ga Central Municipal Assembly is making frantic effort to not be left out.