PACE OF RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION BRINGS FORWARD OPERATIONAL DATE TO MID 2017
(Posted 14th September 2015)
Going by the rapid advance of the construction of Kenya’s new Standard Gauge Railway, which will connect the port of Mombasa with Nairobi and eventually on to Uganda, have operation dates been revised to mid 2017, almost a year ahead of the initially projected opening date in 2018.
Information from Nairobi suggests that instead of completing 40 percent of the civil works by the end of this year will it be half of the work, allowing for the opening date to be revised and brought forward.
While no railway operator has been selected yet will this process go underway by tender soon, to have the company in place well ahead of the line being tested and commissioned.
While primarily built to accommodate the growing volumes of cargo in and out of the port of Mombasa, not just from Kenya but from as far as Eastern Congo, are passenger operations very likely being introduced too, after main rival Rift Valley Railways, which manages the narrow gauge rail network for Kenya and Uganda, has struggled to offer daily rail services from Nairobi to Mombasa, besides those being less popular now due to regular delays and the long journey time. It is generally expected by tourism industry circles that a SGR passenger service could stop at the town of Voi to allow access to Tsavo East National Park and the Taita Hills Game Reserve while another stop in Mtito Andei, the half way point between the coast and the capital, could allow access to Tsavo West National Park. With journey times estimated to be only between four and five hours, a fraction of present passenger train travel speeds – a train can easily take 14 hours right now to reach Mombasa from Nairobi – is rail travel expected to make a rapid return as a safe mode of transport, no doubt eating into the market share of busses and even low cost airlines, of course all depending on the cost of a ticket.
With a cost of hundreds of billions of Kenya Shillings is the new SGR rail line currently the largest ever infrastructure project undertaken by the government in modern day Kenya, rivalling the initial cost and effort when the ‘Lunatic Express’ aka ‘Iron Snake’ was built by the British at the turn of the 19th century. Initially intended to link Mombasa to the empire’s Ugandan protectorate did the railway however lead to opening up of the Kenyan colony and the formation of Nairobi as an unintended second benefit. Nairobi, initially a rail depot and a fledgling settlement, did rapidly develop into the seat of the colonial administration at the turn in the early 1900’s and then led to the building of two of Kenya’s landmark hotels, the Norfolk and the Stanley. The onward railway routing via Naivasha to Nakuru and on to Kisumu, then named Port Florence, and eventually the border with Uganda in Busia only accelerated access to some of Kenya’s most fertile areas and proved to be a catalyst for farming and more.
The new SGR is also due for extension in the 2017 / 2018 time frame to the border with Uganda where a link to Kampala, and eventually to Northern Uganda and Western Uganda, Gulu and Kasese respectively, is already under planning.
