The High Price Section 9 Residents Have To Pay For Poor Road Planning.

Even after having to wait for almost two years for its completion, a closer look at the ongoing construction of Kenyatta Highway near Gatitu evidently exposes some ill thought out construction works. The contractor must have literally focused on major project at the expense of less visible but more effective measures that go along with such developments.

The contractor failed to set aside any provision for Section 9 residents to use it for entry especially those coming from the Tuskys Chania Hypermarket area. Anyone wishing to use the Section 9 entry while driving from the supermarket has to pay the price of inept management and shocking planning by Kiambu County Government and Njuca Contractors, who failed to oversee the omission. 

The contractor has limited connections between the exit from the CBD to Section 9 to naught, and all traffic is being forced through the Garissa Highway. They failed to realise that by increasing direct inter-estate road connections they would reduce the traffic jam mess.

The estate has been cordoned off and can only connected via Thika-Garissa Highway. They will have to drive all the way to the Total Petrol Station near Everton/Cravers along the Thika-Garissa Highway so that they can make a U-Turn back to town. 

This is a time consuming exercise as well as an inconvenience that will eventually contribute to the build up to unnecessary traffic snarl-ups.

The county government and this contractor need to be reminded that good planning of public transit networks eliminates the vast majority of commuter traffic and is essential in making roads work. Bottle-necking road connections into very few intersections is one of the major reasons for traffic jams for they cause confusion among the drivers, especially those using the roads for the first time.

Thika residents have waited painfully for two years to access this road and to forget the traffic jam that has scared away very many would-be investors to this town. They therefore do not expect another blunder from the authorities that will complicate matters for them or a section of their 237ners.

It is the high time the contractor came up with a quick solution to this mess by spreading out possible routes into and out of the town and by giving them more than one point to access the highway and the estates such as Section 9. If it means building some high capacity nodes between these roads, so be it

With Thika people currently wasting hundreds of hours annually in gridlock, the impact of traffic congestion on individual driver’s time is well understood. It is a significant drain on our wallets as well our economies. 

The annual cost of congestion translates into billions annually. It increases impact to the environment, increases vehicle costs from travel delays and also increases chance of vehicle collisions. In addition, when people are stuck in traffic and transit longer than they should, there is less time to do something productive, resulting in a cost to the economy.

By improving and expanding our transportation, we will vastly improve our economic potential as a region. Not only will it help to relieve congestion, shorten travel times, reduce our impact on the environment and improve our productivity, they will also create thousands of jobs.