At dawn across Accra, Kumasi, Tamale, and every major corridor of Ghana, the same silent calculation is made in millions of households: not how long the journey will take, but how much it will cost today. For the ordinary commuter, transport has become the most unpredictable line in the family budget. Fares rise without notice. Journeys are shortened midway. Passengers are forced to disembark and pay again. What was once a routine commute has become a daily financial negotiation with no rules and no referee.

This growing national frustration reached a defining moment on Joy Prime Morning on 15 January 2026, when Ghana’s transport unions were publicly confronted with the blunt question: are commuters being exploited?

It was against this backdrop that Dr Dramani Bukari, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Authority, made one of the most consequential policy statements on transport in recent Ghanaian history. He declared that Ghana must “come to a point where we consider establishing a Public Transport Economic Regulatory Authority, similar to the National Petroleum Authority, to regulate the activities of commercial transport.”

In one sentence, Dr Bukari elevated transport from a chaotic private trade into what it truly is: a national economic artery that must be governed in the public interest.

The significance of this call cannot be overstated. The National Petroleum Authority exists because fuel pricing affects inflation, production costs, government finances, and household welfare. By proposing a Public Transport Economic Regulatory Authority, Dr Bukari was making a powerful economic diagnosis: transport fares now exert the same macroeconomic influence as petrol and diesel. When transport prices spiral out of control, food becomes more expensive, market goods rise in price, workers’ wages lose real value, and businesses struggle under mounting logistics costs. Transport is no longer just about moving people; it is a central driver of the cost of living.

Ghana’s current transport structure explains why the crisis has reached this point. Thousands of privately owned buses, trotros, and taxis operate under loose union and station control.

The government periodically negotiates official fares with unions, but it lacks effective enforcement power on the streets. In practice, drivers, mates, and station operators determine what commuters pay. When fuel prices rise, fares adjust almost overnight. When fuel prices fall, fares rarely decline. When vehicles are scarce, routes are deliberately shortened, forcing passengers to reboard and pay twice. These practices persist not simply because of bad actors, but because the system itself permits them.

Transport is a captive market: people must travel to survive, and that reality confers enormous pricing power on those who control vehicles and terminals.

Over time, transport unions have evolved beyond worker representation. They now function as gatekeepers of national mobility, controlling access to routes, terminals, and fare enforcement on the ground. This concentration of power, without strong public oversight, has created a system where private interests can override public welfare.

That is why the question of exploitation has moved from isolated complaints to a national debate, and why Dr Bukari’s intervention resonated so strongly with commuters.

Globally, countries that have confronted this dilemma have reached the same conclusion Ghana is now approaching: public transport cannot be left to fragmented private control. In Singapore, the state owns transport assets, plans routes, and contracts private operators under strict performance rules. In London, a public authority sets fares, integrates ticketing, and designs the network, while private firms operate services under regulated contracts. In these systems, profitable routes subsidise less profitable ones, fares are transparent and predictable, and passengers are protected from arbitrary pricing.

Dr Bukari’s proposal places Ghana firmly on this global reform path. A Public Transport Economic Regulatory Authority would give the state institutional authority to regulate fares, routes, and commercial conduct across the sector. Crucially, for such an authority to succeed, it must extend beyond policy statements into real operational control, including oversight of terminals, route allocation, ticketing systems, and compliance enforcement. Only then can practices such as double charging, route manipulation, and unauthorised fare hikes be decisively eliminated.

A defining innovation of this reform must be data-driven fare determination. With modern digitalisation, transport fares need no longer be political or confrontational. A national transport regulator could deploy mathematical pricing models, supported by machine learning and artificial intelligence, to determine fares transparently and objectively. These models would integrate real-time fuel prices, inflation trends, exchange-rate movements, route distances, traffic conditions, demand patterns, and a nationally published Maintenance Cost Index reflecting the cost of spare parts, tyres, servicing, and vehicle depreciation. By continuously analysing these variables, artificial intelligence systems would automatically adjust fares within clearly defined bands, ensuring pricing is economically accurate, predictable, and fair. This approach would eliminate arbitrary fare hikes, reduce disputes between government and unions, and build public trust—because commuters and operators alike would understand how, when, and why fares change.

The economic benefits of such reform would be profound. Transport costs are embedded in the price of food, rent, retail goods, and services. When fares are inflated and unstable, inflation spreads throughout the economy. A regulated, data-driven transport system would reduce the hidden transport tax on every product, reinforcing national disinflation efforts. Workers would spend less on commuting, effectively increasing real incomes. Businesses would benefit from predictable logistics and reliable labour mobility. Urban growth would become more efficient as routes are planned rather than improvised.

Most importantly, a Public Transport Economic Regulatory Authority would restore fairness to a system that currently burdens the poor the most. Market women, apprentices, casual workers, and students bear the highest cost of transport chaos. A strong regulator could introduce fare caps, concessions, and targeted subsidies while ensuring operators are compensated fairly and transparently. Profitable corridors could cross-subsidise less busy routes so that no community is isolated simply because it is not commercially attractive.

Dr Dramani Bukari’s call was not merely a proposal—it was a recognition that Ghana’s transport model has reached its limits. When transport becomes powerful enough to shape inflation, productivity, and social stability, it must be governed like energy, water, or telecommunications. Ghana now stands at a crossroads. It can continue with a fragmented system that allows private gatekeepers to control a public necessity, or it can reclaim transport as a public service guided by national economic priorities and powered by modern data science. History may well remember Dr. Bukari’s intervention as the moment Ghana began to take its roads back.

By

Sanusi Zankawah (PhD) International Trade and Transport Economist Snr Research Fellow. Africa Research and Consulting Centre (Arccentre)