Sh24 000 000 000 makeover for Nairobi train transport

When Nduva Muli talks these days, he gets dreamy. And so the Kenya Railways Corporation managing director spent two hours on Thursday explaining Kenya’s next wonder: a modern rail system that promises to revolutionise commuter life and cargo transport.

“As a country, we have not given due emphasis to our rail transport system and, therefore, mostly go for short-term solutions. Yet railway transport is a long-term and expensive undertaking, which needs careful planning and execution,” he said. “The time has come for us to change this and let us seize the moment.”

Picture this: the Nairobi commuter train will be leaving the station at intervals of 30 minutes and less than 20 minutes between the city centre and Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, down from the average 90 minutes it takes to navigate jammed city roads.

Cut commuting time

The trains will pick and drop passengers at trendy stations between 5am and 9pm. The three phase project will cut commuting time by more than half. For instance, it will 45-50 minutes from the city centre to Thika, 50 minutes to Limuru and 35-40 minutes to Athi River/Lukenya compared to the present unpredictable travel, which takes an hour for the shortest distance in the best case scenario.

While the current train moves five million passengers per year, which translates to about 20,000 passengers per day, the proposed rail will haul 60 million passengers per year or 200,000 passengers per day upon completion at a cost of Sh24 billion ($300 million). Countries aspiring to ease city transport have adopted this model, and India has been the latest with its recent upgrade of Mumbai commuter transport. Prof Evaristus Irandu, a transport expert, says this could help decongest city roads.

“Commuter train is a good mode of transport because one train could carry 4,500-5,000 passengers per trip, which is the capacity of about 100 buses,” said Irandu, an associate professor at the University of Nairobi’s department of Geography and Environmental Studies. Conceived in 1992 as a knee-jerk reaction to a strike by matatus, the project began in April 2009 when the corporation signed a joint development agreement with InfraCo, a donor-funded infrastructure development company.

The company, which shoulders much of the upfront costs and risks of early stage development, thereby reducing the entry costs for private infrastructure developers, gave the corporation a grant of Sh320 million to meet the costs. The first phase of the project, which was allocated Sh600 million in the 2009/10 budget for feasibility studies, will involve the rehabilitation of about 160km of the existing rail system within Nairobi.

The project will also involve the construction of 7km of a new track to JKIA’s Unit 3, and rehabilitation or construction of stations and other facilities along the network. The government has allocated Sh1.9 billion in this year’s budget to finance this.

Modern stations

“We are soon starting to upgrade the track ourselves because we have the expertise,” said Mr Muli. “Subject to getting approvals from the Nairobi City Council, we plan to procure contractors to start building the stations by latest December this year.” The stations, which will have shopping centres, car parks and bus stations, will be constructed in Embakasi Village, Makadara, Buru Buru, Mwiki, Kibera and Githurai. The station planned on Mombasa Road near Syokimau will have parking for 1,000 vehicles.

The track upgrade and the new stations, which will expand social and economic opportunities for city residents besides introducing efficient transport, is expected to be complete by late 2011 or early 2012. “The current track, which is underutilised, is sufficient in terms of its gauge because it can provide us with fairly good speeds for passenger transport of 70-80km.

If it were freight trains, then we could need the wider gauge track for more speed, stability and capacity to haul larger weights,” said the KRC managing director. Even with increased vandalism on some sections, especially in Kibera where residents uproot the rail whenever they protest, he ruled out relocating the line. “We need the people of Kibera because they are our passengers,” he said.

To wean them off the vice, Kenya Railways has received Sh880 million under the Relocation Action Plan funded by the World Bank to build a wall along the railway line and construct stalls on the land side of the wall to be leased out to residents. They will also put up houses away from the line to accommodate those living close to the track and provide them with community centres, water and waste management facilities.

But there are those who feel the corporation and the government could be biting more than they can chew with such an ambitious project. “We need the metro rail. But I am not sure we can afford it. Also I feel some of our people may not be able to pay the high fares needed, a situation that raises the question of sustainability,” says Mr Edwins Mukabana, the managing director of Kenya Bus Service Management Ltd.

Only the city centre-JKIA route may be economical, he said, explaining that the Thika route would face serious competition from “another fast track” in the form of PSVs after the expansion of Thika Road. “It may not be the best option because rail transport transports only 15 per cent of the total commuters while the rest use buses,” he said.

Prof Irandu disagrees. “If the overloading of the trains we see whenever there is a matatu crisis is anything to go by, rail transport is a mass capacity and cheap mode of transport ideal for the low income and congested areas like Kibera, Dandora and Umoja,” he says. The project will be a public private partnership, where the government will own, upgrade and maintain the track, stations and the signalling system, while the private sector operates the rolling stock.

“If I may use the railway transport language, we will own the track while the private sector owns the wheel. Simply put, it is like we are building a road and the private sector will buy the matatus to operate on that road,” he said. To finance part of the project, Kenya Railways is seeking approval to float a Sh16 billion bond.

“It has worked in the UK and that is why Richard Branson has Virgin trains,” he said. It is easier for the private sector to obtain equity and debt financing for rolling stock as opposed to raising money for fixed infrastructure like a railway line. And experts can’t agree more. “With the help of a metropolitan transport authority, all transport systems compliment each other rather than competing against each other,” says Mr Mukabana of Kenya Bus, “such that you can use one ticket to board a train and a bus.”

The system will be replicated in Mombasa and Kisumu. “We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the local authorities of Mombasa and we have contacted those around Kisumu,” said Mr Muli.