An Appraisal of Road Condition Effect on Rural Transportation in Sekyere Central District of the Ashanti Region of Ghana
- 1 Department of Agricultural Engineering, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria
- 2 Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana
Abstract
The objective of this study was to assess the condition of the road network within the district with a view to find out if and how they affect the transportation costs. Four sets of primary and secondary data on the district’s road surface types, road condition mix, cost of transportation of farm produce and humans on the road network were collected, collated and subjected to statistical analysis using a Completely Randomized Design. The results indicated that the road conditions had high significant effects on the transportation costs of both human and agricultural produce. The road network of the district consists of 21 roads with a total length of 176.6 kilometers out of which 8 were classified as poor, 7 as fair and only 6 as good. The highest agricultural produce transportation cost of 1.46 per tonne-kilometer was obtained from 3 of the poor roads while the lowest cost of 0.86 per tonne-kilometer was obtained from only 1 of the 6 good roads. The highest passenger transportation cost of 0.3 per passenger kilometer was obtained for 1 of the 8 poor roads while the lowest cost of 0.1 per passenger kilometer was obtained for all the 6 good roads and 4 of the fair roads. In conclusion, transportation cost of passengers on the poor and fair roads was 2 - 3 times as high as the cost of transportation on the good roads. Transportation cost of agricultural produce on the poor roads was 70% higher than it was on the good roads.
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