The N1 highway; A gift or a curse? Pt2

Confusion at Mallam Interchange

This might not be too much of a problem for everyday users but for first time users, it sure is and I for one have fallen victim to this confusion before. If you are driving towards Mallam interchange from the Awoshie area along the highway for the first time and you are suddenly confronted with the interchange, how do you decide which of the three lanes to take especially at the kinds of speed that the highway affords its users. There are three main lanes, one to the far right which goes down the interchange to to Mallam proper which you are first confronted with. A few meters from that, there is the middle right lane which takes you up the interchange and down to meet the Winneba road towards Kasoa, then there is the left lane which takes you up the hill and down in the opposite direction Towards Kaneshie. 

Google earth image of the Mallam interchange

 

Well! I am able to describe it so well because I am an everyday user but for the first time user this is usually a confusing decision to make at high speed since there is absolutely no way of telling which of the lanes goes where while a wrong decision means that you end up going towards Kasoa when you intended to go to Mallam or vice versa or going towards Kaneshie when you intended to go to Kasoa or vice versa. In the second pair of cases especially, you have to travel close to another kilometre in order to make a legal U-turn. This is a recipe for disaster and I would not be surprised at all if there have been some accidents recorded there already due to motorists attempting to make the right turn in the last minute at such high speeds. Below is a short animation to illustrate the point. Take note of the white SUV with the red arrow on top.

Short animation to illustrate the point. Take note of the white SUV with the red arrow on top.

In the video above, a first time driver takes the middle lane that take you over, then down towards Kasoa. Notice there are no signs to indicate which lane to take so the passenger who is obviously familiar with the place has to warn him in advance.
The solution

Well! This situation calls for a very simple intervention and once again I stress that it does not involve rocket science. In fact, I’m tempted to believe that it is only due to negligence that this has not been done already and it would be very sad if anybody has had to, or will have to lose his or her life due to such negligence. A simple road sign should do the magic and prevent needless accidents. Here is an illustration of what I mean.

 

Above is an illustration of how a simple overhead sign can warn motorists beforehand

The N1 highway; A gift or a curse? Pt1

Most drivers from the western-most suburbs of Accra would see the N1 highway as a blessing. Indeed it is considering the ease with which one can now get to or from town in less than thirty minutes as opposed to when one had to spend two to three hours on the road to or from town. The N1 highway has made life a lot easier for drivers and we do owe a depth of gratitude to those responsible for its construction. Being an everyday user myself over the last few months of its completion, however, I have observed several issues with the highway some of which are very obvious, others not so obvious to those unaffected by them. Being an architect and at the moment an urban design student, I think I owe it a duty to my nation to point out some of these problems and to go ahead to propose my ideas of solutions to those issues. I believe that image is everything and as such I shall try to as much as possible put my ideas in pictorial form so that readers can understand them even better and I shall love to hear your feedback on my ideas. The two major issue I have identified have got to do with the following.

1. Lack of enough and appropriate pedestrian crossing
2. Confusion among motorists at the Mallam interchange

Apart from problems, however, I have identified some opportunities that the highway presents with respect to more efficient public transport systems and I shall talk about these and make proposals in that regard as well.

Pedestrian Crossing

I have always been baffled about why the designers of the highway would create only a few foot bridges on this really long stretch of highway and worst of all locate them at areas where pedestrian activity is minimal as opposed to areas like the Abeka-Lapaz or Kwashieman junctions where quite obviously there are and always have been a lot of pedestrians crossing the road. As is quite often the excuse in this country, I gather it has something to do with lack of enough resources. The big question however, is that, if there were only enough resources to build a few footbridges, why not put them where they are most needed.

Above is a Google earth image illustrating the distance between footbridges and major busy areas

Secondly, it is quite baffling to me how these footbridges are designed without any regard for the disabled, especially the paraplegic, wheelchair users and the elderly. It is quite worrying that in this day and age with all the talk about the disability law which was passed quite recently and how to not marginalize such people in society, such a grievous mistake can be made on such a huge scale. I leave it to one’s imagination how such people get across this highway. Sad! Isn’t it?  Now the question is, if the mistake has been made, can we not do anything to remedy the situation? I think we can. There are two possible solutions: Build adjoining ramps or build special mechanical lifts as attachment to existing bridges. I personally think mechanical lifts will be a better idea because ramps are too heavy and take up too much space. Correct me if I'm wrong. One might rule out mechanical lifts with the misconception that it involves "rocket science", which is very often the assumption in this country, but this technology has existed for centuries and there is no need to re-invent the wheel. Just take a look at most multi-storey construction sites around and you would find that this technology is being used extensively already in this country.

 

Above is an illustration of how a mechanical lift can easily be attached to the existing bridges to take care of wheelchair users as well as elderly citizens. I'm sure a few ingenious mechanical engineers can easily put this together. Would love to work with anyone interested to design a workable lift for this so please contact me if you are interested. Watch this space for updates to the design. This is just a mock-up of the idea.

Is it any wonder that you find pedestrians crossing the highway dangerously despite the wall that were built to prevent that? After-all, any urban designer will admit that as a rule of thumb, most people are comfortable walking 400m, approximately, 5 minutes to get what they need and so we cannot expect anyone to be comfortable walking up to 1km, approximately 12.5 minutes just to climb up a five meter high footbridge and make it across an almost 20m wide highway. I dare to say you can hardly get everyone to comply even in the most disciplined of societies. I believe there is the need for more footbridges at the appropriate locations and most importantly they need to be well designed with a more human face than was done with the existing ones. Watch this space for my take on a more human centered design of a footbridge.

Introduction

I grew up in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Over the years, i have become more and more passionate about cities. It started with my fascination with buildings and architecture which gradually led to me studying architecture in the university. While studying architecture, it became clearer and clearer over the years that, the urban environment in which buildings exist have a very big role to play in how buildings function and how people interact with them. This realization has led to my keen interest in urban planning and design which are in my opinion, even more important than architecture. I believe that once we have got our urban environments working properly, architecture will naturally follow suite. This belief was instigated through my first visit to London where i realized that London was not a great city because of the old traditional buildings that it is mostly made of, which were obviously not always built with the best of architectural principles, but that it was a great city because of how much attention that has been paid in the design of the public realm. The parks, the streets, the transportation systems, the public squares, the shopping centers and so on. So now, I am a student of urban design, with aspirations towards being able to help reshape our cities into more sustainable cities which provide the basic needs for the entire spectrum of their inhabitants and this blog is only the beginning of my contribution towards this cause. My name is Hassan Salih and I am a Ghanaian Urbanist.

Disclaimer
I do not in anyway claim to be a qualified urban designer and that my ideas are the best. This blog is only a platform to express my personal opinions about urban issues in Ghana. The solutions I propose on this blog are my ideas based on common sense, sometimes novel, sometimes borrowed from other sources in which case I shall always provide the necessary references and links. Please feel free to post comments, criticize me if you disagree with me, but please be civil about it when you do. Thanks.