Commuter Railway set to revolutionize Nairobi

Following concession of Kenya railways operations to rift valley railways Kenya railways mandate was revised to include among others promotion, facilitation and participation in national and metropolitan railway development. To effect this Kenya railways is expected to develop commuter railway services in Nairobi metropolitan, construction of standard gauge railway from Mombasa to Kampala, construction of a standard gauge railway within the Lamu corridor which includes Lamu-Juba, Nairobi-Addis Ababa and development of railway cities around the railway stations at Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. The main role of the commuter railway will be to especially decongest roads in Nairobi by transporting passengers hence expansion to new routes. The project is to be developed in 3 phases with phase 1 covering the core system which is over 100 kilometres. Among areas in focus include provision of services between Nairobi railway station and Ruiru, Embakasi village, Jomo Kenyatta and Kikuyu. Phase 2 covering Thika, Lukenya and Limuru will cover 70 kilometers. the third phase will be capital intensive and will include among others building of new infrastructure to extend services to areas with missing links which include Ngong, Kiserian, Ongata Rongai and Ruai totaling an additional 100 kilometers. Just the core system of phase 1 is expected to cost 16 billion although various adjustments have been considered to reduce cost. One such modification is the scrapping of a 120 meter tunnel crossing below Mombasa road that would cost a massive 3.2 billion and which was the most expensive part of the venture. The tunn el has been replaced by a flyover where Mombasa road will instead be elevated. The commuter service is expected to substantially reduce the amount of time it takes to access the city centre with for example a journey from Syokimau costing just 60 shillings and taking about 12 minutes from the current 90 minutes. For those heading to the airport it will then take another 5 minutes using a shuttle bus service before the line is complete. Just this station is expected to handle 20,000 once it opens in December saving the economy billions. The transport PS Cyrus Njiru is now challenging the private sector to invest on high capacity vehicles to ferry passengers from the railway stations. However a few challenges such as access to the Nairobi railway station which is currently a bus station and encroachment of the railway corridor continue to undermine expansion efforts ::UPS:: The core system is expected to be complete in June 2014.