Agony of motorists at Kasoa tollbooth
There was excitement and a sigh of great relief when the Ministry of Roads and Highways issued a directive to terminate operations of all tollbooths throughout the country, especially from drivers and passengers who use the road on daily basis.
Reasons provided for stopping the operations of the tollbooths made a lot of sense, such as high level of pollution at the location of the tollbooths, waste of man working hours due to heavy traffic and its effect on the health of road users, among others.
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Unfortunately, the plight of drivers and passengers on the Mallam-Kasoa road, especially in the evening from 3 p.m. from Accra, Mallam and towards Kasoa, has become worse than when the tollbooth was operating.
If it took motorists about 30 minutes from the West Hills Mall to get to the tollbooth, a distance of not more than two kilometres, it now takes about 45 minutes to an hour to do so.
The cause of this hellish traffic is not far-fetched; the location of the police station and the bus stop at Tuba junction, which is also about 20 metres away from the tollbooth.
They should both be immediately relocated.
If the bus stop is not going to be removed from its present location, the shoulder of the road for vehicular parking must be widened to enable vehicles intending to park to pull off completely from the main road to give way to other vehicles using the road.
Even though complaints from the public have elicited some efforts from the police to ease traffic, they have not yielded any significant results.
The only solution is to deal with the design at the police station, as the four lanes from the tollbooth terminate into a single lane.
Whoever approved the location of the police station made a huge mistake for siting it just by the roadside.
As the complaints are getting deafening by the day, the Roads Ministry must marshal the needed resources as early as practicable to deal with the traffic menace.
Kwame Amoah, Tel. 020 817 0403, E-mail: [email protected]