George Bush Highway: Where are the directional signs?
One characteristic of highways that one finds abroad are directional signs. They are so visibly positioned that one cannot miss the exit to take to one’s destination.
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In juxtaposing that to the only six-lane George Bush Highway that we have in Accra, drivers are left to use their own imagination and to figure out which lane at some of the major intersections along the 14 kilometre Highway would take them to their destinations. If you are a first-time user of the highway, you are better off doing your homework before you set out on your journey.
Take for example the journey from the Accra Mall to the west of Accra, specifically towards Mallam Junction, McCarthy Hill, or even to Cape Coast. I am familiar with that side of the highway so after the Santa Maria traffic intersection, I am able to stay in the right lane as I prepare my exit.
However, as I used the highway once again last Saturday, the reality of the possible confusion in the minds of drivers as they approached that end of the highway became real. Are we waiting for someone to crash their vehicle in the midst of that uncertainty before some people do their job?
Last Saturday, I saw two drivers ahead of me as we approached that particular exit who suddenly swerved lanes which suggested to me that they were not sure if they had taken the right lane, to their destination. I began to appreciate a concern a friend shared the other day when he was on that side of the highway. It can certainly get confusing without directional signs.
From the Santa Maria traffic light, which is the last one on that stretch before one gets to the end of the road that divides to go to Dansoman or McCarthy Hill and Cape Coast, there are no directional signs. Yet, that is a major intersection.
When the highway was first opened in February 2012, a lot of concerns were raised on the safety and user-friendliness of the highway. Some shortfalls were identified and well articulated in the media. Visible directional signs were one of the concerns raised for redress.
Two years have passed and sadly, most of the concerns raised by users of the highway have not received much attention. We are doing business as usual. What we are failing to appreciate is that we have missed an opportunity to have made our first six-lane highway a model for replicating in future. We have looks on for the wrong things to have taken root and thus making the 14-kilometre stretch quite a dangerous road for both drivers and pedestrians.
Such dangerous practices like active hawking are now entrenched on the highway. Walking across from lane one to the sixth lane has become a normal practice and sometimes drivers stop dangerously to allow pedestrians to cross; a case of two wrongs. There are no visible speed limits so drivers are speeding and criss-crossing lanes and posing danger to other drivers.
The very few directional signs are so small that one is likely to miss them.
The actions and inaction of the Accra city authorities and the Roads and Highways Authority to get the right things in place to curtail some of the unacceptable practices currently happening on that otherwise beautiful highway are going to be costly to the nation one day.
Casting my mind back to the early days of the inauguration of the highway, we were told by the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) that the jobs that were left uncompleted were the portions to be completed by the Government of Ghana. The unfinished jobs included directional signage, speed limits and other beautification projects.
We seem to have forgotten about the unfinished agenda that was to bring the George Bush Highway to the standard of other highways elsewhere. That omission has been conveniently normalised and what do we see? The result has been another creation of a pile of lawlessness.
We seem to have lost the chance to have policed and maintained a beautiful highway which would have helped ease traffic in one part of the city. Now the only six-lane highway we can boast of has joined the ranks of lawless and most dangerous roads to use. But for how long can we look on?
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