Kenya: expansion of railway line to be faster, cheaper

[John Ashworth]

Sh16bn expansion of railway line to make transport faster, cheaper

By LUCAS BARASA, lbarassa@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Friday, July 22 2011 at 18:57
Saturday Nation

The railways company has embarked on a Sh16 billion expansion for fast, reliable, safe and affordable commuter rail services in Nairobi and surrounding areas.

The Kenya Railways (KR) project involves track rehabilitation, modernization and doubling, building a new branch line to JKIA, new signaling installation, remodelling the existing 10 stations and building 12 new ones, commissioning new coaches and introducing modern trains operations.

The KR managing director Nduva Muli’s office said a 6.5 kilometre rail will be built from Embakasi Station to JKIA, a station next to Unit 3 and another next to Mombasa Road.

The Syokimau station is being constructed and will be connected to Embakasi Railway Station.

Decongesting Mombasa road

The station aimed at decongesting the Mombasa Road by transferring some of the commuter traffic to the railway will have a car park for 1200 cars.

It has capacity to handle 20,000 passengers a day and it will cost Sh400 million together with the link line.

The track line connecting JKIA to Embakasi station will include a 120 metres tunnel estimated to cost Sh3.2 billion and is to be completed by December 2012.

KR plans to develop a “core-system” covering 10 km and providing modern commuter rail services between Nairobi Railway Station and Ruiru, Embakasi, JKIA and Kikuyu.

The services will further be extended to Thika, Lukenya and Limuru. The services will further be extended to Ngong, Kiserian, Ongata Rongai, Kiambu and Ruai.

KR however said it is facing challenges of encroachment along the railway corridor and matatus and bus terminus that block entrance to Nairobi Railway station.

Mr Muli said KR has developed a national railway master plan which has been adopted by the government and East African Community.

Three corridors-Mombasa/Kampala/Kisumu (northern), Lamu-Juba and Nairobi to Addis Ababa have been identified.

At northern corridor, 95 percent of freight traffic (17.5 million tones) moves by road causing expensive damage to the infrastructure and serious congestion at the port.

“The existing metre railway does not have the capacity to absorb sufficient traffic from the roads to ease traffic due to lack of investment in infrastructure upgrading and maintenance,” the MD said.

The maximum capacity of the metre gauge railway is estimated to be only 4.2 million tones annually-far below the 18 million tones of transportable freight off loaded at the Port of Mombasa.

The Kenyan and Ugandan governments have signed an agreement to build and operate a standard gauge, to speed up transport in the northern corridor. The railway development is expected to take four to five years.

A second transport corridor will be developed to connect the proposed port at Lamu to Juba in South Sudan and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

There are plans to extend the railway line to Cameroon.