More good news for Thika residents……

Acting Director General of the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) Mr. Silas Kinoti.

Efforts to ease traffic congestion in Thika town and especially along the busy Thika-Garissa Highway have received a major boost with the news of the planned construction of a 10-kilometre link road from Eastern Bypass to Greater Eastern Bypass road (GEB).

This road is the latest in a series of projects, either in various stages of tendering, about to start or underway meant to decongest Nairobi city and its satellite towns such as Thika.

Making the announcement, Acting Director General of the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) Mr. Silas Kinoti said that the construction works on the road will start in May and take about two years.

“We have floated a tender for the construction of a 10km link road from Eastern Bypass to the Greater Eastern Bypass road. The tender will be opened next month, awarded in April and we expect the contractor to move on site come May,” said Kinoti.

The proposed GEB is approximately 77 kilometers long and is located within Machakos, Nairobi and Kiambu Counties. The proposed project road starts approximately 1.3 km from Lukenya Junction (A109/D519) which is at a short distance to the south east of A104/109 junction near Athi River town.

This road then progresses eastwards and intersects C98 at Ngundu/Kamulu and thereafter northwards to the Nairobi river turn-off, where it branches, with the West bound limb connecting the existing Eastern Bypass road at Nairobi River Turnoff.

The continuing limb of the proposed road progresses in a northerly direction to Munyu area, through Juja area (Juja Farm) and then turns and progresses in a north-easterly direction before joining A3 road (Thika-Garissa Highway) near Kilimambogo.

This simply means that people heading to Mombasa of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) from Thika East, Machakos, Kitui and Garissa counties will be branching from Thika-Garissa Highway at the Kilimambogo junction, thus avoiding Thika town altogether.

It is envisaged that development of the Greater Eastern Bypass is a major boost to the area since it will transform the current subsistence agriculture farming into commercially oriented and business like enterprises.

The project road area falls within the Athi River Basin (also coded as Drainage Basin 3) and one of the five major drainage basins in Kenya. There are a number of rivers along the road alignment. The rivers are the semi-perennial Athi River, and the perennial Nairobi, Thiririka, Ndarugu and Komu rivers.

Potential sources of water in the area include Athi River, a semi-perennial river; others are the perennial rivers which include Nairobi, Ruiru, Thiririka, Ndarugu and Komu Rivers.