Inside Kenya Railway city decongestion plan

[John Ashworth]

Inside Kenya Railway city decongestion plan

The introduction of the city commuter system with modern and efficient rail infrastructure and passenger trains will have the capacity to handle 60 million passengers annually once completed in the coming months... The works included refurbishment of the 250 kilometers railway transport feeding the city, including the Konza line in Makueni and the rehabilitation of the stations across the country... The purchase of 11 Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs)...

Once fully inaugurated, the plan is to interlink all the country’s transport points. It will link the port of Mombasa through the Sh327 billion Mombasa- Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) line that has a terminal at the Inland Container Depot (ICD) in the city’s Embakasi area. It will also offer a linkage to the country’s airports and the road transport network through the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system. Easing transport to the country’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) will lead to the development of a new 6.5 kilometre railway line from the Nairobi Central Railway station to the airport, further cementing Nairobi’s position as the commercial hub of East Africa and beyond... To ensure success of the city rail commuter project, Kenya Railways is carrying out modernization and expansion of the underutilized railway transport infrastructure facilities within Nairobi in order to attract passenger traffic from the Matatu dominated roads. This includes modernization of stations and rolling stock, upgrading track and signaling systems as well as introduction of new stations in Buru Buru, Pipeline, Umoja, Githurai and Donholm...