From home to work and back: The leadership challenge in urban mobility

By Professor Kwasi DARTEY-BAAH

Every working day begins and ends the same way for many urban employees: uncertainty. In the early hours of the morning, workers crowd bus stops hoping to secure transport to work on time. In the afternoon and evening, that anxiety returns as they struggle once again often more fatigued to find safe, affordable, and reliable means of getting back home. This daily cycle of stress is not merely a transport inconvenience; it is a leadership and organisational development failure with far-reaching consequences.

Urban mobility frames the entire workday experience. When workers arrive late in the morning after exhausting commutes, organisations absorb the cost through lost productivity, disrupted workflows, and strained supervision. Yet the challenge does not end at closing time. Evening commutes, marked by congestion, long queues, fare uncertainty, and unsafe travel conditions, drain employees physically and emotionally. A worker who ends the day stranded or overstressed carries that burden into the next morning.

From a leadership perspective, this represents a breakdown in systems thinking. Effective leaders understand that performance is shaped not only by what happens inside offices and factories, but also by how people transition between home and work. When mobility systems fail at both ends of the day, organisations pay twice, first in diminished output, and later in burnout, absenteeism, and disengagement. The predictable response to unreliable transport is private vehicle ownership, even among those who would prefer otherwise. This coping strategy worsens congestion, increases environmental and health costs, and further slows both morning and evening travel. When everyone is forced to solve a systemic problem individually, the system collapses under its own weight.

Cities that demonstrate leadership approach mobility as a continuous flow, not a one-way morning problem. They invest in mass transit, protect dedicated bus operations, improve traffic signal coordination, and enforce loading and parking controls throughout the day. These measures stabilize travel times, reduce stress, and restore predictability to daily life.

Leadership is ultimately about care expressed through action. When people can leave home with confidence and return home with dignity, organisations thrive and societies progress. A nation that fails to move its people well both to work and back home undermines its own development. The time for decisive leadership in urban mobility within Accra, and Ghana for that matter, is not tomorrow; it is long overdue.

 

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