New train service to ease city traffic jams

More than 2,000 Nairobi residents will spend less time daily in traffic jams in a fortnight when a new commuter rail service starts.

This follows the completion of the Imara Daima railway station which will serve residents of Eastlands and those living along Mombasa Road.

Kenya Railways acting managing director Alfred Matheka said work on the station would be completed at the end of the month, seven months behind schedule.

“The delay was due to interruption by the rains and some imported material took quite some time to be delivered,” Mr Matheka said.

He also said a few changes were made to the design.

PARK AND RIDE

The new station, with a parking capacity of 500 vehicles, is expected to ease traffic on Mombasa Road as it will make it possible to introduce the “park and ride” concept where motorists leave their cars at the terminus and take the train into the city.

The project, which cost approximately Sh360 million, comes less than a year after the commissioning of Syokimau station last November.

The station comprises a main concourse-cum-entrance lobby, ticketing, baggage handling and travel information centres.

A service area with shops, restaurants and public service facilities is already complete. A stand-by automatic generator and a transformer have been set up.

The Imara Daima station is smaller than Syokimau and the Makadara Interchange station that is coming up soon.

The Makadara station will serve more than 5,000 commuters every day and will have parking space for more than 5,000 vehicles.

Imara Daima will be the second station to be completed under the Nairobi commuter railway project after the Syokimau one as the government moves to decongest the city of public service vehicle traffic.

The jam on Mombasa Road is thickest at the turn-off to City Cabanas, where the new Eastern Bypass joins it, at General Motors, where heavy trucks make U-turns and at Nyayo Stadium, where traffic from Industrial Area and Lang’ata Road pours into the three-lane road.