The President of the Ghana Institution of Engineers, Magnus Lincoln Quarshie has revealed that the Kwame Nkrumah Circle Interchange project will save Ghana about US$25million annually.
When completed, the three tier interchange will transform the Kwame Nkrumah Circle into a pedestrian and motorist friendly zone with linkages to various suburbs in Accra.
He made the observation on Tuesday during a familiarization tour of the interchange by the Ghana Institution of Engineers.
The Kwame Nkrumah Circle is a key intersection in the major road network in Accra. It carries about 84,000 vehicles a day and constitutes a key bottleneck in the major road network that links the suburban areas of Accra to the central business district.
[contextly_sidebar id=”zdV7eq20PH2JrvqdCoMeEsPidNjncW4P”]The 74.88 million euro project, is being jointly financed with credit from the Brazilian Government and the Ghana Government.
Magnus Lincoln Quarshie told Citi News the project is a welcome effort at reducing time spent in traffic by commuters.
“What we did was that we evaluated how much time people spent in traffic before the construction. And in a year we estimated that it cost us, just sitting in traffic around Kwame Nkrumah Circle, $25million annually. Having to remove the bottleneck we have reduced drastically the time that people spent here commuting and this save Ghanains enough time to us for other things. So that is what we call value of time. To undertake this project is a good one and it reduces the cost of staying in traffic due to congestion.”
He commended the government for initiating the project.
The project, which began a about a year ago is scheduled to be completed in 2015.
By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com/Ghana