Accessibility planning: Overlooked or absent by design in medium-term development plans? A catalog of the policy orientations for 52 diverse municipalities in Ghana

Metrics for cataloging regional transportation planning success are quickly evolving from the business-as-usual mobility measures like roadway level of service towards more sustainable accessibility indicators. Indicators that connect people to opportunities. While this conventional shift gains momentum in modern planning, the exhibition of accessibility planning strategies appear to be a hit-or-miss endeavor – either supplanted by the age-old "build first, make amends later" paradigm or vaguely referenced in policy documents. This rhetoric of mobility versus accessibility-centered planning (which we call AVM orientation) and its application often grapples with uncertainties and remains inconsistent in many developing regions, limiting a clearer understanding of their current planning orientation. Our paper addresses this gap by using normalized accessibility score indexing to capture the orientation and integration of accessibility planning for 52 diverse municipalities in Ghana. By syllogizing data from the most recent medium-term development plans of selected Metropolitan, Municipal, and District assemblies (MMDAs) nationwide and the National Transportation Policy framework, the study examines the current planning orientations, gaps in performance measures, and policy directions for adopting more sustainable metrics. We find that development planning only loosely acknowledges the principles of accessibility planning, often using performance metrics incongruent with conventional sustainable outcomes. Less than a third of MTDPs include any land use and transportation integration measures, and fewer still account for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction. Among the MMDAs that capture accessibility goals, development strategies still prioritize road infrastructure expansion, especially evident in small-sized Districts where the underdeveloped transportation network necessitates these prerequisite measures. The paper discusses implications for planning policy and practice while offering recommendations for bridging the crossroads for accessibility in long-range development planning.