Bicycling: Good for the Environment, for the Economy, and for Your Health

At Gh¢5.30 (about $5.50) per gallon, Ghanaians have more than an ecological incentive to embrace an alternative means of transportation. According to the League of American Bicyclists, an estimated 500,000 bike commuters across the U.S. help that nation to save 227,272 gallons of petrol every single day. During a recent trip to the U.S., I visited with two friends who were dedicated bicycle commuters. One is a retired university professor, who said that he had never driven to his lectures on campus in over twenty years of teaching. The other is a senior judge, who has been bicycling his way to work for years. Both are in great physical condition and are doing something to minimize the adverse effects of their daily routines on the environment.

For Ghana to realistically emulate this sound environmental, economical and healthy practice, we need to encourage and support our governments, national and local, to develop an infrastructure that supports bicycling. It should be much less expensive to incorporate bicycle lanes and similar bicycling-friendly schemes now as we expand our existing road networks and build new ones than to attempt to do it later. For the health of our environment, our pocketbooks and our bodies, let each one of us contact and request our policy makers and executive organs of government to start us on the road to improved transportation systems now. The Ministry of Transportation is located in the Ministries in Accra. Their email address is info@mrt.gov.gh. Don't wait for someone else to act and then complain when nothing gets done.