Kumasi-Ghana, July 08, GNA – Ghana’s quest to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be a mirage if we do not pay particular attention to the incidence of transport poverty as a country.
Professor Michael Poku-Boansi of the Faculty of Built Environment at the Kwame Nkrumah University Science and Technology (KNUST) who made the observation, said transport poverty would become Ghana’s latent cause of missing out on the SDGs although the government was working to achieve the SDGs.
Delivering a paper on Transport Poverty in Africa at KNUST in Kumasi, he proposed the development of a National Transport Poverty Index (NTPI) led by the Transport Ministry, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and academia to measure how various assemblies are addressing transport poverty.
Again, variables such as transport access, transport mobility, transport affordability, exposure to transport externalities, and inclusiveness could serve as the basis for developing such an index.
Prof. Poku-Boansi explained that the development and use of the NTPI would be the first of its kind globally and serve as a useful tool in shaping transport investment decisions.
He argued that studies leading to the planning of Ghana’s transport futures related to electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, mobility as a service (MaaS) must be taken seriously.
This recommendation, he noted, “may seem far from us but the emergence of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Bolt should remind us of the global nature of the world we are in today and the need to prepare for the future.”
Transport, according to Prof. Poku-Boansi, had been extensively described as the engine of mobility without spatial interactions and economic activities within and between urban areas and other geographical locations.
He said providing transport infrastructure or reducing barriers to travel could serve as an important strategy for addressing poverty.
This is because an efficient and reliable transport system widen the range of opportunities for employment and education, among others.
The lack of mobility is inextricably linked to social disadvantages and exclusion, the Professor observed.
According to Prof. Poku-Boansi, a study of trips per day making characteristics he conducted in 2022 within Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana, revealed that high-income households made about 35 per cent more trips than those in the lower-income category.
