Page 38 - Engineering in Kenya Mag

Ongoing construction works on the Nairobi Expressway that is set to easen traffic flow between JKIA and James Gichuru
IRoad in Nairobi.
F you live or work to the east of Nairobi city, you will most likely find yourself stuck in the busy Mombasa Road traffic during the
morning and evening rush hours on any day. In recent months, this situation has become even worse because of the construction of the Nairobi Expressway, injecting a new level of chaos into the country’s capital city.
When finished, the expressway will be a 27km highway, some of it elevated, that will connect Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to the Nairobi-Nakuru highway. The project being undertaken by the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) is set to dramatically change the city’s skyline and is meant to ease traffic flows in and out of the centre of East Africa’s main commercial hub.
EASING TRAFFIC:
Nairobi Expressway set to change the City's outlook
This is a road of many firsts. It is billed as among the first public private partnership (PPP) projects in Kenya. The project company will therefore bear the risks for the entirety of the design, construction, operation and maintenance, on a “build-operate- transfer basis”.
The road will also be the first expressway and toll highway in the country, and engineers clearly have their work cut out for them, not just at the design and construction stage, but also at the operation and
maintenance phases.
Being a toll highway means the
four- and six-lane dual carriageway, with 10 interchanges along the route, will not be free to use – drivers will have to reportedly pay a toll of between Ksh200 and Ksh300.
“The contracting authority undertakes quality control checks to ensure that the quality standards for the outputs are met. The contracting authority will benefit from knowledge transfer, particularly in the management of expressways and toll
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Engineering in Kenya Magazine Issue 002