CHRISTMAS TRAFFIC JAM LOCKS OUT THIKA TOWN FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD.

Motorists using the busy Thika Superhighway on Christmas day spent hours on the road as Thika suffered one of its worst traffic gridlocks. Thousands of vehicles got stuck in a traffic jam stretching 30km. Scenes of chock-a-block traffic could be reported all the way from Kenyatta Road in Ruiru heading into Thika Town and the Thika-Nyeri Highway as well up to High-Level near Makenji in Murang'a County.

The worst hit section was between Mang'u High School and the Blue Post Hotel in Thika, where motorists took more than an hour to snail through. On the roadside were several vehicles that either overheated, ran out of fuel or the owners simply decided to wait until the jam eased.

The highway is a heavily used road, linking Nairobi City to various counties in the former Central, Eastern and North Eastern Provinces of Kenya as well as being a link to Somalia and Ethiopia. On a good day, it takes drivers less than 40 minutes to make the 55-km trip between Nairobi and Kenol Trading Centre in Murang'a County.

Traffic Police were deployed at various spots to ease the jam. A majority of travellers affected were aboard buses and PSV matatus who were heading up-country for the Christmas Holidays. The commuters who talked to Thika Town Today narrated their accounts, saying that most of them left home as early as 6:00pm on Friday morning hoping to join their folks in the village early enough for the celebrations, only to be stuck for over 3 hours before police officers cleared the traffic jam.  

Those who were leaving Thika Town via Haile Selassie Road had to bear with a traffic snarl-up that snaked through all the way from the round-about near the K.R.A. offices in Thika to Blue Post Hotel where they joined their counterparts from Nairobi who were busy working their way through the Thika Road gridlock.  

Vehicles heading towards the city from both Thika Town and Murang'a had the easiest of time since the road was so clear. The notorious Kenyatta Highway in Thika and the Thika-Garissa Road junction near Gatitu was just a walk in the park. Only a handful of vehicles could be seen using those roads.