The deterioration of the Accra-Tema motorway will get worse, as the infrastructure has outlived its functionality, according to Council Member of the Ghana Institution of Engineers, Ing. Dr. Charles Adams.

According to Ing. Dr. Adams, the current state of the over half a century road, is as a result of failure by the Ghana Highway Authority to do routine maintenance since its opening.

“Where we are now, we have now reached its deterioration and the rate of deterioration will be rapid,” Ing. Dr. Adams stated.

At least 500 potholes are said to dangerously scattered on the 19-kilometre road commissioned in November 1965 by Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah. The motorway forms part of the N1 freeway, which starts from Aflao in the Volta Region, and ends in Elubo in the Western Region.

It is also part of the Trans-West African Highway (Abidjan-Lagos Corridor) and also links the capital city, Accra, to the Kotoka International Airport and the Tema Port.

However, the lack of repair works on the Accra-Tema motorway which is one of the major roads in the nation’s capital, has left the road infrastructure with dangerous potholes.

Speaking Wednesday on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Ing. Dr. Adams blamed the deteriorating situation on the lack of routine maintenance and improper supervision.

“When you have a road like the motorway, your approach to maintaining it should be different from other roads.

Ing. Dr. Charles Adams

“It all has to do with the level of supervision [and] the level of quality checks,” observed the Engineer, who is also a Senior Lecturer at the College of Engineering of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.

He said, the current situation could have been avoided if the Highway Authority had done an overlay on the road sometime in 2010, when the infrastructure started showing visible signs of weakening. 

This “laid-back approach” to managing the country’s road infrastructure Ing. Dr. Adams pointed, is one of the major factors impeding economic growth.

“Most of the roads we are doing, especially the maintenance works, we don’t have any calculation; it is just one-policy-fits-all.

“The road is one of the most important sectors of this country. When it doesn’t work, agric will not work [and] manufacturing [sector] will not work,” he stated.

Traffic management

In managing the peak hour traffic on the highway, the Engineer suggested the use of “intelligence approach” which may include expanding the lanes at concentrated points during such times to ease the flow. 

According to him, “the kind of traffic we have on the motorway is not something that we should not be able to manage.” 

“It is just because we have adopted a laid-back approach to managing the traffic on the motorway,” he added.

Play audio attached to listen to excerpts of the interview: