EFFECTING URBAN TRANSPORT SYSTEM RESILIENCE THROUGH INTEGRATION OF COMMUTER RAILWAY SERVICES, A CASE OF MWIKI, NAIROBI

Urban Study

Sub-Saharan Africa population is expected to increase by 129% in 2050 basing in the year 2010. Rapid population growth coupled with urbanization and industrialisation, creates extreme travel demand and high car ownership which, are the primary factors of congestion in urban roads. Congestion has manifold adverse effects on commuters, environment and general city’s inhabitants, counting high costs of travel, high commuter stress, prolonged travel time, high energy consumption, physical inactivity, increased carbon emission, working hours, noise pollution, delivery time, labour costs, constrained economic productivity, general people’s quality of life, adverse health and environmental externalities. The situation is escalated in extreme weather. Governments have made continual attempts to improve existing road infrastructures to solve the mobility snag, however they have borne trifling results. Road transport in isolation cannot be able to solve this peril. Hence, the necessity of integrating commuter rail services in Nairobi Transport System, so as to enhance traffic flow in the existing roads. Nairobi railway commuter railway services have been in existent since early 1990s, but they have not been embraced by most Nairobi City County commuters, ascribable to multifarious glitches such as overcrowding within the train wagons, which provides an environment for some anti-social behaviours; lack of instantaneous communication systems; poor accessibility to railway stations; unreliability; breakdowns of locomotives; low train speed, inadequate social amenities, inadequate parking spaces among others. This can be solved by providing users with efficient, reliable, seamless, multimodal services, which will augment train modal split and, in the process, solve the congestion puzzle.

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