Principal Research Scientist at the Building and Road Research Institute-CSIR, Dr. Williams Ackaah says an efficient public transport system will be the panacea to the persistent traffic congestion in cities nationwide.

Attributing vehicular traffic jams to the increase in the number of private vehicles on the roads, Dr. Ackaah predicted that the situation would only get worse should it be left unaddressed.

He believed that an efficient transport system would reduce the number of individuals who use private vehicles and in turn, prevent gridlocks.

“We have so many people owning cars, the population in the city keeps growing and so the vehicle population also keeps increasing, resulting in this congestion. So many of these vehicles are private vehicles that occupy so much road space but when it comes to the number of people they are carrying, they are very few.

“You can’t have a city like Accra with a population of four million without an efficient public transportation system and that is what we should be thinking about,” he said.

He added, “We need to provide an efficient transport system with exclusive lanes for the buses and things will work.”

Dr. Ackaah’s suggestion comes after the Ministry of Transport laid a Legislative Instrument before Parliament seeking to amend portions of the Road Traffic Regulations 2012 to allow Members of Parliament, Ministers, and judges to use sirens and drive without speed limits.

Read also: Ministers, MPs to use sirens in cars, drive without speed limit in new L.I

The L.I. was however withdrawn Tuesday afternoon after public agitations.

Read also: LI granting siren use rights to MPs, Ministers withdrawn

Speaking on Joy FM’s Top Story, Dr. Ackaah said the government was attempting to find an easy way out with such an L.I.

According to him, the time was ripe for the government to strategise and implement a transport system that would solve the congestion in cities.

“The issue of traffic congestion affects everyone; it affects nurses, it affects doctors and every worker. So the solution to this problem should be comprehensive. It should be holistic and not to a particular group of people,” he said on Tuesday.

Touching on the expansion of lanes, Dr. Ackaah said the move was not sustainable.

“It is not practical for government to keep on expanding lanes. We used to have one lanes, we’ve increased it to two lanes and the road gets filled up again and then we increase to three lanes. “How many lanes can we go? What we need is an efficient transport system, that is our only way out,” he pointed out.