Ghana Priorities: Urban Transportation

1. Improving Transportation in Ghana
Limestone Analytics
Bahman Kashi, Sarah Carello, Mike Nkansah

2. Improving Urban Mobility in Accra

3. Cost of Congestion
• Accra has a growing urban population and increasing levels of
motorization
• If commuters get caught in traffic, they can often expect hours of
delays
• The congestion in Accra forces commuters to leave home hours
before they start work
• If a project can increase traffic speed by 10% on arterial roads, it
would save 2,207,587 hours. When valued with the average urban
wage this leads to 3,351,054 USD in savings in one year.

4. Improving Urban Mobility
Possible ways of improving mobility and reducing congestion in Accra
include:
• Improved public transit
• Upgrading tro-tro system
• Improving law enforcement
• Redesign major crossings
• Legalising okada taxis
These options could reduce time cost, vehicle operation cost, and improve
safety for road users. This analysis focused on improving public transport
due to the availability of data.

5. Bus Rapid Transit
• Costs included:
• Infrastructure and Institutional strengthening
• Operational costs
• Benefits
• Time Saving
• Reduced carbon emissions
• Not included due to limited data
• Reduced vehicle operation costs
• Increased road safety

6. Analysis

7. BCR
Discount rate
5% 8% 14%
Benefits (USD) 593,883,852 318,153,413 114,164,630
Costs (USD) 283,055,362 213,177,850 142,891,826
BCR 2.10 1.49 0.8

8. Volta River Ferries

9. Transport on Volta Lake
This project would:
● Create a multi-modal corridor for cargo to travel from Tema Port
to Northern Ghana and the landlocked countries to the North.
● Make higher quality and more reliable passenger ferries
available to communities around the lake.

10. Map of Multimodal
Corridor

11. Intervention
• Costs:
• Investment in landing stages and facilities around Volta Lake, new or upgraded
ferries for passenger transport, new cargo ships for North South transport of
Cargo
• Operational costs
• Value of increased transport time
• Increase in carbon emissions
• Handling costs
• Benefits
• Avoided transport cost
• Reduced carbon emissions
• Reduced road maintenance
• Reduced informal service cost

12. Costs and Benefits

13. BCR
Discount rate
5% 8% 14%
Benefits (USD) 1,555,129,974 1,049,933,510 535,767,056
Costs (USD) 1,161,195,157 851,680,520 531,210,153
BCR 1.34 1.23 1.01

14. SUMMARY BCR TABLE
INTERVENTION BENEFITS COSTS BCR
BUS RAPID TRANSIT
SYSTEM
318,153,413 213,177,850 1.49
VOLTA RIVER FERRIES 1,049,933,510 851,680,520 1.23