Nairobi-Mombasa by standard gauge? Not in 4 hours

Four more MPs have questioned the process through which a Chinese company was awarded the contract to build the standard gauge railway line set to be launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday. 

WHILE THERE is understandable exuberance about the promise of the recently launched standard gauge railway, much of the commentary has repeated the heavily exaggerated claims around the initiative, with little critical review.

Kenyans are being promised a new age of railway transportation that a cursory analysis will show is unsupported by the facts.

Most reports have made the basic mistake of assuming that because the passenger trains will be able to attain a speed of 120kph, all one has to do to determine total journey time, is divide the roughly 500kms between the two cities by this speed. This is how they arrive at the four hours.

The fundamental flaw in this logic is that 120kph will be the maximum, not the average, speed. The train will have to move at much slower speeds when climbing hills, negotiating corners and approaching stations.

There will be waiting time as wananchi in the many towns in between get on and off the train. Their interests should not be forgotten in the rush to get passengers from the capital to the sea.

Going by the assumptions underlying what we have been reading, residents of Voi, for example, will have to travel to Mombasa to board the train before it speeds, uninterrupted, on a presumably flat and perfectly straight railway track to Nairobi. These conditions do not even obtain in Formula One racing. Those cars slow down on corners and take pit stops to change tyres and refuel.  

This brings up another problem with the four-hour claim. This will be a single track on which cargo as well as passenger trains will be moving in both directions.

To avoid collisions, there will have to be several holding bays at stations where trains heading in one direction can move off the main track to allow trains moving in the opposite direction to proceed. This idle time needs to be factored into the total travel time.

I presume that railroads, like bitumen roads, need regular maintenance, especially after a few heavy goods trains have rumbled by. This would mean further time-consuming activity on the track.

Finally, there has been little discussion about the point of view of the insurance industry. The recent train accident in Spain in which 79 passengers died was attributed to overspeeding at a curve.

It would be interesting to hear what (speed-related) conditions insurers would impose before issuing insurance cover, which will be a mandatory requirement for the service.

We would do well to temper all the excitement about this project’s potential with some realism that is informed by the facts.

Danson Mbithi
Nairobi

Kenya@50 must count for more, no?

HAPPY Birthday Kenya, you are 50! That should be the going phrase on the streets of Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru and all other towns in Kenya, and on the paths and cattle tracks in villages across the country, right?

I was in the group that felt, despite our shortcomings, we have every reason to celebrate. But the trending #sickat50 on Twitter brought that optimistic outlook to a rude halt.

Under that hashtag, the ills in this country were laid bare in less that 140 characters. Top on the list was the cry of the medics over haphazard devolution of health services.

They said that for their kind of work, it is “Not Yet Devolution.” That the counties cannot yet handle doctors, nurses, clinical officers and radiographers among other critical personnel. They add, “We are a national resource; retain us as such.”

But no one will listen to them. All they have been told is to go back to work; that it is the Constitution that decrees they go to the counties. The government threw in a court order, for good measure. End of discussion.

This is unfortunate but hardly surprising, coming from the government, which has been adept at having its way.

We have seen the government play stubborn with the media, then the NGO, VAT, shortly after the NSSF Bill and now the doctors. Are we going back to colonial days when the masters did whatever they deemed fit in lording it over the natives?

For a 50-year-old country, it is not unreasonable to ask for dialogue in such matters. At 50, and with self-governance, Kenya’s should be a listening government, not one that admonishes, ‘Shut up, we are the government.’