Homa Bay County Senator Moses Kajwang has fingered the matatus as the main stumbling block in Nairobi city’s path in acquiring an efficient public transport system and ridding the town of unnecessary traffic jams.
In an interview with a local TV station, the senator who also chairs the Senate Public Accounts Committee stated that a combined effort between the national and the county government of Nairobi could easily afford Nairobi an efficient public transport system.
“Today our biggest problem in having an organised public transport system is the matatus because the matatu owners say ‘We own this town, we own this city, we are the ones who voted in this government; so you must allow us to operate the way we are operating’,” Kajwanng lamented.
The senator reminisced a time when the public transport system worked in Nairobi, stating that the matatu in the city ruined what initially worked efficiently in the city.
“I feel sorry for Gen Zs who did not experience the time when public transport in Nairobi, when Kenya Bus Service worked on schedule when a No.34 bus would leave Otiende at 6:30 am and you are sure that by 7:30 am you are at JKIA, going through Jogoo Road. There was a time when those things used to work,” Kajwang said.
He said that Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) could work in Nairobi as it is in the case of other African countries where the system is in use.
Kajwang noted that the traffic jams in the city are a result of the use of multiple single cars to transport a few p****e where the same number of p****e or more could have used a bus.
“The traffic jams we have is because we have a hundred Ubers carrying a hundred p****e instead of one bus carrying one hundred p****e,” Kajwang said.
He said the Nairobi Area Metropolitan Transport Authority (NaMATA) and the Kenya Railways should make the hard decisions and take charge of the public transport system.
Sorting matatu madness
The BRT often move along dedicated lanes, allowing them to zoom past traffic and offer predictable timelines for cities unable to afford more sophisticated transport systems like the metro and light rail.
According to the World Bank, BRT is currently in use in Dar es Salaam, Lagos and the South African cities of Cape Town, George, Johannesburg and Pretoria.
Other cities intending to develop the BRT in Africa with World Bank funding are Abidjan, Dakar, Douala, Kumasi, Maputo and Ouagadougou.
African cities are the fastest-growing in the world according to the World Bank and this growth comes with a significant influx of p****e into and out of the cities.
Left unchecked, the increase in cars and commuters in a city leads to more gridlock, snarl-ups and subsequent health hazards which significantly reduce the competitiveness of cities.
