General News of Friday, 2 November 2018
Source: 3news.com
2018-11-02
The project was initiated in 2008 by President John Agyekum Kufuor and completed in 2012
The Minister for Roads and Highways, Kwasi Amoako Atta, has said the George Walker Bush highway in Accra will soon have face-lift to enhance safety on the road followings plans to fix three additional footbridges to augment the existing ones.
Also known as the N1 highway, the road has been a major source of worry to residents who live in communities along the highway and commuters alike.
A documentary entitled “Dangerous Highway” by TV3’s award winning journalist, Portia Gabor, in March exposed the extent of loss the highway has caused to human life over the years it has existed without adequate footbridges.
Similar to the N1 highway is the Madina-Adenta highway which has over the years claimed lives due to the non-availability of pedestrian footbridges. There have been campaigns by the affected communities to push government to act but to no avail.
Quite recently, Media General, owners of TV3 and others championed a campaign to have footbridges fixed on the Adenta-Madina highway.
Answering a question on road safety on the floor of Parliament on Friday, the sector minister said an assessment of the N1 highway has been done and that three footbridges will soon be fixed.
“Your question bordered on safety and I have indicated that a number of footbridges on that stretch of road, a distance of 14 km. We have done proper engineering assessment on that road”
“And we have realized that we need three more bridges at very critical intersections”, he said.
The minister mentioned the ‘critical intersections’ as “ Lapaz Junction, Akweteyman junction and Awoshie junction”.
He added the footbridges will be fixed together with streetlights to help improve safety and visibility on the road.
He observed the most challenging task is to educate users to patronize the footbridges when they are fixed.
Interestingly, in 2013 the Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Development Authority (MIDA), Martin Eson-Benjamin told Accra-based Joy FM that survey had been done to determine which areas needed footbridge.
“I think that enough survey has been made now for everybody to know exactly which area needs a footbridge because when we were doing it initially we were not very, very sure where to put the footbridges,” he admitted.