Fallow footbridges - Pedestrians preyed upon on roads

It was 8am on a Saturday, August 24, this year. I had pitched camp under the Kaneshie footbridge, which is about 300 meters away from the Obetsebi Interchange.

My mission was to learn first-hand the extent to which pedestrians patronised the two footbridges constructed in the area to ensure their safety.
Some pedestrians were seen walking up and down the footbridge from one end to the other.

As a bolt from the blue, three young men meandered their way through moving vehicles from the Accra-bound side of the road to the median. One after the other, they pushed their heads through an opening that had been created through the metal barricade under the footbridge, carefully folded their bodies and slipped through to the Kasoa-bound side of the road.

They were followed by scores of other pedestrians who abandoned the footbridge and passed through the hole in a similar fashion. Within 20 minutes I had counted 32 people who risked their lives to cross the road in that crude manner.

When I engaged them in a conversation, one of them who gave his name as “Aluta”, said it was a waste of time using the footbridge when he could scale the barricade in the median of the road.  “It will take me more than five minutes to use the footbridge from one side of the road to the other; but if I use the hole in the median, it takes just about a minute or two,” he said.

For 23-year-old Kwasi Aboagye, the footbridge is too steep and energy-sapping to use. “If you use this footbridge, you get so tired because of the steep steps, and I do not want to go through that ordeal,” he added.

Meanwhile, some drivers said the situation where pedestrians meddled with the movement of vehicles often resulted in crashes. “If you are driving at Kaneshie here and you are not very careful, you will always knock people down under this footbridge. You will not see them coming, but before you realise, they are in the middle of the road,” Kwaku Duah, one of the drivers, said.

Yaw Ansah, a 32-year-old driver, expressed disappointment that although the police are always on the roads, particularly in the Kaneshie area, they watch on as people jaywalk under footbridges.

Scores of pedestrians abandon the Mallam Market footbridge and continue to jaywalk.

Regulations
Experts in road safety say footbridges help to reduce pedestrian-vehicular interaction and the incidence of pedestrian crashes. It is for this reason that the Road Traffic Regulations, 2012 (L.I 2180) make it mandatory for pedestrians to use footbridges that have been provided at designated sections of highways to prevent road crashes. Section 154(3) of L.I 2180 states: “A pedestrian who fails to use a footbridge or an underpass where one is provided, commits an offence.”

Section 154(10) of L.I 2180 also states: “A person who contravenes this regulation commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than five penalty units or to a term of imprisonment of not more than seven days or to both.”

Although these regulations exist, the law has not been enforced over the years, creating room for recalcitrant pedestrians to abandon footbridges and put their lives and those of other road users on the line.

Wider picture
Apart from Kaneshie, a number of visits to some major highways in the Greater Accra Region revealed that while pedestrians have abandoned the footbridges and continue to jaywalk at their peril, traders have also converted those facilities into trading spots.

At the Mallam market footbridge located on the Odorkor-Kasoa stretch of the Accra-Winneba highway, it was observed that hundreds of traders crossed from one side to the other without using the facility.

The situation at footbridges located in areas such as the Atomic Junction, Madina Zongo Junction, Nkwantanang, Taifa, Lapaz and Sakaman was not any different as those facilities were lying fallow.

While the footbridges lie predominantly idle, some of the pedestrians, including children, meander their way through moving vehicles and jump over walls and barricades in the median of roads as they move from one side of the road to the other.

Apart from the footbridges, pedestrian walkways that have been created in some parts of the city to aid the movement of people have been taken over by petty traders.

For instance, pedestrian walkways that stretch from the Graphic Road, Farisco, Kingsway through the Ghana Cocoa Board area to the Central Business District (CBD) of Accra have been heavily encroached upon by petty traders and hawkers with such impunity that pedestrians have no option but to compete for the road with vehicles and motorcycles.

Pedestrian walkways from the Graphic Press House towards the COCOBOD area taken over by stationary vehicles.

Pedestrian knock-downs
The failure of members of the public to use footbridges and the taking over of pedestrian walkways by traders have contributed to road crashes, injuries and deaths over the years.

A comprehensive analysis of road traffic statistics from the National Road Safety Authority (NRSA) revealed that between 1991 and 2023, 58,156 persons died from 351,278 road crashes across the country, while 461,432 others suffered varying degrees of injury.

A further analysis of the NRSA statistics over a 10-year period (2012 to 2022) revealed that out of the 23,490 people who were killed in road crashes, 8,570 of them were pedestrian knock-downs, representing 36.5 per cent of the total deaths.

This was followed by head-on collisions which claimed 5,331 victims, representing 22.7 per cent of the total deaths within the 10-year period. The other contributors to the remaining deaths were vehicles hitting animals on the road, objects on the road, slide swipes and vehicle running off the road.

Expert views
A Road Safety Advocacy Consultant at Global Road Safety Partnership (GRSP), a global road safety international organisation, Bright Oywaya, explained that pedestrian knock-downs were high, especially within the African region, because pedestrians have been disenfranchised by the road infrastructure.

She said it was worrying that while policy makers and governments were building many footbridges, the bridges had steep steps and designs that made them unfriendly for pedestrians to use.

“Most of our people in Africa walk a lot. Look at a woman who walks from the market already tired and has to cross the road using a footbridge and the bridge has steep steps, is long; and the women are carrying children. Sometimes, they have to walk over 100 meters to the footbridge to go and climb stairs. There is no motivation to do so,” she said.

Ms Oywaya, who is also the Executive Director of Association for Safe International Road Travel, Kenya, stressed that there was the need to prioritise the interest of pedestrians when constructing such footbridges.

She observed that any intervention targeted at curbing pedestrian knockdowns must be data-driven and properly implemented taking into consideration the number of people who walk.

“If you build a road without bearing in mind that pedestrians should be given priority at every possible opportunity, the crashes will continue to happen,” she added.

The road safety expert said instead of designing footbridges in the form of overpass, African countries must begin to look more towards underpass footbridges that are more convenient for pedestrians to use.

Way forward
The Director-General of the NRSA, David Osafo Adonteng, shares in the view expressed by Ms Oywaya that venturing into underground footbridges as an engineering solution to pedestrian knockdowns was a laudable idea, except to add that it required more investment, especially in security facilities.

“Some countries have tried underground footbridges and they worked effectively because there are enough security monitoring systems to protect the users of those facilities. Criminals hide under those bridges to commit crimes; so, there should be cameras to monitor all the time to give users the confidence that they are safe,” he said.

Touching on how to promote the patronage of the existing footbridges, the NRSA was working with the police and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to clear all footbridges and pedestrian walkways of trading activities. He said the enforcement exercise would also ensure the removal of traders from pedestrian walkways to protect road users.

 It is important that urgent steps are taken to remove any human or structural system that is claiming the lives of thousands of pedestrians on our roads. The reality is that behind all the road crash statistics are real people – husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and children.

Writer's email: ngnenbetimothy@gmail.com