Vehicles stop as digital traffic lights control the jam in Nairobi on August 04, 2013. PHOTO : Denish Ochieng
Douglas Galton Fenzi, who was the first
man to drive from Mombasa to Nairobi, went on to found the Automobile
Association in Kenya and is remembered by his monument next to the
General Post Office.
That feat was in 1919, and Nairobi
had slowly grown as a town after being established as the railway
headquarters in 1899 and Administrative Headquarters of the then British
East Africa Protectorate in 1907.
It is ironic that a
city with such a rich history of transport faces among the biggest
challenges in the world. Traffic congestion, road accidents and the
development of an inconvenient and unreliable public transport system
are but a few.
At one point, roads were designed to
accommodate the rickshaws and carts that were the main form of
transportation before the introduction of cars.
Public
transportation, though, began on a formal note in 1934 with the
establishment of Kenya Bus Service (KBS), then owned by both the United
Transport Overseas Limited and the Nairobi City Council.
KBS
had monopoly rights to operate within the Nairobi city boundaries, a
right that was suppressed in 1973 by a presidential decree authorising matatus to operate paid transport of persons without a licence (a change of policy in 1984 required them to have a PSV licence).
By
1986 KBS were operating 90 different lines covering 1,867.6 kilometres.
Their fleet of 293 buses carried over 300,000 passengers per day.
They
faced stiff competition from matatus, who operated on same line numbers
(thus the various route numbers we use today) and also formed
associations.
In 1986, the Nyayo Bus Service began and
grew to a fleet of 89 buses within two years. Eventually expanding to
over 300 vehicles, poor management saw many buses out of service. By
mid-1995 the buses disappeared from the streets.
As a
response to the difficulties facing Nairobians, Kenya Railways started a
commuter service on their existing rail network that grew to cover four
major lines transporting an average of 15,000 passengers per day. Last
year a line to Syokimau was added, the first track to be laid in almost a
century.
A major change came about with the “Michuki
Rules” (Legal Notice No. 161 of 2003). KBS had changed ownership twice
since 1991 and were in heavy debt. This was like last nail in the coffin
and the government opted to licence other bus companies to operate
within the CBD.
Market demands have forced these buses
to operate with no fixed scheduling, no fixed fares and fixed pick up
and drop off points. Rowdy touts and conductors are common while the
hunger to maximize profits is seen in reckless driving.
The
‘no-standing’ passengers rule in buses lead to an increase in the
number of PSV vehicles on the road and investors opted to have minibuses
than bigger buses.
What is the way forward for
Nairobi? Mobility is one of the most important aspects for any
progressive economy. For the country to get to be recognized as a world
class city by 2030, there is urgent need to have a sustainable,
equitable and efficient transport system. Goods need to be efficiently
moved from producer to consumer while people need to move from home to
work and vice versa.
As we progress as a city, we
should not make the mistakes that other developed countries have made.
We ought to avoid the conventional short term solutions for the benefit
of a few but come up with long term sustainable solutions then will help
the majority. Without this, we will not solve the congestion problem.
The
recent trend has been to construct more roads. Roads are necessary,
missing links and by passes save people time and de-congest the existing
framework. However, with the population of Nairobi set to be over 14
million in the next 30 years there are only so many roads we can build.
Tradition
dictates that when traffic flow exceeds road capacity, lanes should be
added. We do not realize that this makes it more attractive for people
to drive personal cars. With the increasing urban population, we end up
with more car traffic congestion returns at a larger scale.
Building
motorways and detour roads (there are exceptions) to solve transport
problems or building flyovers to overcome congestion are
counter-productive measures. Additionally, once we provide more space
for cars, we produce an artificial demand for long distance trips and
destroy the opportunities for the local scale.
The
city needs an agreeable urban transport system in which the car is under
the control of the administration and society and not the other way
round. These lessons can be learnt from the experiences of cities like
Melbourne, New York, and Boston but the best examples were the eventual
destruction of Birmingham’s ‘Concrete Collar’ and removal or Seoul’s
Cheonggyecheon highway.
Experience from Vienna
(Austria), Curitiba (Brazil) and Bogota (Colombia) shows that the
acceptance of public transport reduces congestion drastically. There is
urgent need to establish a better public transport system for citizens.
A system that will not be looked upon to benefit certain classes of
society but is available for all, meeting the basic demands of all.
Punctuality, speed, easy accessibility to terminals are critical for
this to happen.
Curitiba and Bogota both opted to use
of Bus Rapid Transit. Here, Buses are given designated lanes on roads
that are separated from other lanes either through grade separation or a
barrier. The system works on major corridors with other vehicles
feeding it with passengers from arterial roads. A similar system was
launched in Lagos last year and Dar es Salaam is also preparing for a
similar launch.
Light Rail Transit is also another
possible means. This rail system that utilizes predominantly reserved
but not necessarily grade separated rights of way. They carry large
numbers of passangers along major routes at moderate speed and
maintaining timely schedules. The LRT System in Tunis was established in
the mid-80s and has 66 stations on 5 major lines that cover the city.
There has been talk of Kenya Railways intending to set up LRTs on
several routes: Nairobi-Githurai, Juja Road, Jogoo Road, Ngong Road,
Outer Ring Road and Waiyaki Way.
An interesting but
yet to be explored way of transportation are Cable Ways. These have
traditionally been associated with alpine ski resorts and movement over
geographical barriers.
Recently, they have been
successfully used by some cities as a means of urban mass transit. They
provide a viable and affordable way of supplementing urban transport.
Not
only do they pass over barriers, provide a safe means of travel, they
also require minimum land use, are completely independent of the other
existing means of vehicular transportation and are much cheaper to
install than LRT and BRT.
They also offer easy
integration with other modes. This was first tried in Medellin, Colombia
in 2006 as a cheap, fast and safe way of transporting people. They now
move up to 40,000 commuters daily and over 20 cities around the world
are now looking into this system. Algiers are currently building 5
separate lines; while Lagos launched a similar project this year.
Though
over 47% of Nairobian’s make their trips by foot, pedestrians have been
the most neglected travellers. The city has very poor footways;
pedestrian facilities like footbridges and crossings are below standard
and there is a general lack of respect of pedestrians by drivers.
Pedestrian deaths are commonplace.
The CBD, with a
majority walking populace within it, has only one walkway – the Aga Khan
Walk and one wide pavement on Mama Ngina Street. Cyclists are even
more endangered with no bicycle lanes on most roads. Recent road
construction has attempted to add cyclists lanes but it is said that ‘a
bicycle lane that is not safe for a 9-year-old, it not safe at all.’
It
is important not to plan our city centering on vehicles but based on
the movement of people. Planning around massive highway construction
will keep us rotatin around the same problem. Los Angeles, Beijing and
Sao Paolo have all experienced the consequences of putting primary
emphasis on road building as a solution to decongestion.
Safe
pedestrian movement, efficient public transportation and promotion of
non-motorized transport ensure the safety of the people and also brings
efficiency to the entire system as its focus is human movement and not
vehicular. It is the people who are moving from one place to another and
not their cars.
Mass transit should not be seen as ‘A
system for the poor’ but one for all to effectively move around the
city in a timely, predictable and comfortable manner. If it is looked at
as a system for the poor, it will remain a poor system.
A world class urban transport system would provide easy, safe and affordable access across the city of Nairobi to all.
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