Rehabilitating Accra-Tema railway transit system
Those of us who commute between Accra and Tema on a regular basis know the pain we have to endure. Our only motorway is overstretched. As for the Beach and Spintex roads, the least said the better.
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Excitement, therefore, greeted the decision to rehabilitate the defunct railway system linking the two cities to ease the frustration. That was over eight years ago!
Yes, more than eight years after we commenced the rehabilitation of this system, commuters are yet to see the anticipated relief. Note that this was not a project initiated from scratch. It was an existing system that only needed to be rehabilitated.
Nkrumah in his wisdom had built it some 50 years ago as part of the establishment of the port city of Tema. After his overthrow, we allowed it to deteriorate, while we struggled to commute.
Project scope
Once we committed ourselves to rehabilitating the system, any serious plan should have included the following:
•Use heavier gauge rails to increase carrying capacity and improve safety. This would enable us to evacuate goods more efficiently from the port.
•Lay two pairs of tracks to increase the frequency of train movements to move both goods and people.
•Build stations with secure parking lots along the route to encourage commuters to park their cars and use the trains.
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•Set up bonded warehouses at vantage points along the route where goods meant for Accra and its suburbs could be conveyed and deposited for clearance by their owners. There would be no need for these importers to go to the port to clear their goods and contribute to congestion.
•Procure enough passenger and goods trains to satisfy the enormous transportation needs of people and goods. The passenger trains should have first, second and third class coaches with increasing ticket prices from third to 1st classes to encourage patronage by middle-class passengers wary of pickpockets.
What has been delivered
My investigations have shown that:
•The rails used were the same gauge rails that were bequeathed to us by our colonial masters. These have long been discarded by modern rail systems.
•The same single pair of tracks has been maintained, disregarding the increased traffic volume.
On January 27, 2014, I decided to pay a visit to the new Tema railway station. I knew it was somewhere near the Tema Mankoadze trotro station so I went there to enquire. On my arrival, I saw a queue of people waiting to board trotros to Accra. Surprisingly, no one there was aware of the rail service, let alone the location of the station. It was when I began heading towards the Cocoa Processing Factory that I came across some coconut sellers who directed me to the station.
Waiting area
With a population of over 500,000 in Tema, the Tema main station has been woefully under-designed. If and when inhabitants become aware of the service and decide to use it, one can imagine the chaos that will be created there.
The parking lot can accommodate only about 15 cars, hardly enough to hold cars of middle-class dwellers in Tema who would wish to use the service.
Platform
When I got to the station, the platform was empty, save for a couple of workers idling at the seating area. I waited till the train arrived at about 3:00 p.m. and departed.
The picture below shows the train as it was about to depart. It had come empty and was about to depart empty.
So here were potential customers of the rail service, only about 200 yards away, queuing in the hot sun to board trotro to Accra but had no idea that the service existed! I asked the station master how long the service had been running and he said it was inaugurated about a year ago. When I confronted him with my observations, he agreed that they needed to create an awareness of the existence of the service but directed me to see his boss.
Why were they running empty trains for a whole year when all it needed was a publicity campaign to let beneficiaries know?
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Income-generating potential
Trucks have been parked and abandoned on various roads in the town and at the port, creating congestion, increasing the rate at which accidents occur on the roads and damage our fragile road infrastructure. My vehicle was damaged and I was lucky to escape injury when a huge truck tried to dodge traffic by navigating through community roads in Tema. Recently, a bridge on the Accra-bound carriage of the motorway was damaged by these overloaded vehicles. The inconvenience and economic cost to motorists as a result of the partial closure of the bridge are incalculable.
Two goods trains could replace all these trucks and bring in enormous revenue to the railway company and the government. It is these sources of revenue that the government should pursue rather than increasing taxes for impoverished Ghanaians. So who is obstructing the realisation of this project?
The picture below shows the sea of trucks waiting to haul cargo out of the Tema Port.
Sea of trucks at Tema Port area. Who own these vehicles?
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Sabotage?
It is obvious that economic saboteurs are hard at work to prevent Ghanaians from benefiting from the investment. They own the trucks that contribute to carnage on our roads, congestion at the ports and damage to our road infrastructure. They profit while we suffer silently and they care less. This kind of sabotage has been recognised by the government, and I believe it is time they stopped talking and started acting. It is time to get ruthless with these saboteurs, otherwise the people of Ghana might interpret it as ineptitude on the part of the government.
When can we see some action to remove the truck menace?
Writer’s E-mail: norbenne1@yahoo.com