Nairobi traffic system one of the most chaotic in the world

Hector Pieterson. Does the name ring a bell? In case it doesn’t, allow me to bring you up to speed. But first, indulge me to give brief mention to the Lang’ata Road Primary School playground grabbing incident.

A sense of déjà vu enveloped my thought process upon seeing the image on the front page of the Daily Nation on January 20.

The photo, by Evans Habil, showed a youthful looking man carrying an injured pupil who fainted when police officers lobbed tear gas at the young protesters.

The pupils were demanding that a wall built around their playground by an alleged land grabber be demolished.

If it was not a true occurrence, one would be excused to think that it was a staging of a movie scene from a historical incident in South Africa—the Soweto uprising of June 16th 1976 —where conservative estimates indicated that 176 students lost their lives on that fateful day.

The poster image of that uprising was that of a young man carrying a pupil who had been shot by the police.

The pupil lay horizontally on the young man’s arms, helpless, blood oozing from his head, appearing almost lifeless with his sister running besides them as he sought to rush him to a medical centre.

Unfortunately, the pupil was pronounced dead on arrival at the local clinic. That pupil’s name was Hector Pieterson.

Of course, like the rest of Nairobians (and the whole world in general), I was shocked at this real time re-enactment of Apartheid South Africa in modern Kenya.

Yet I dare say that bad as the incident was, it pales in comparison with another underlying tragedy that has been growing right before our very own eyes yet we elect to ignore it.

Unlike the tear-gassing incident, it is neither a tragedy of force nor violence. It is a tragedy of subtle behavioural coercion and dangerous manipulation of the mind.

It is not a tragedy of imposing impunity from a strong few (like the land grabbers of the school playground), but rather it is a tragedy of cultivating the seeds of impunity in the masses.

It is a tragedy in full colour – red, green and amber, complete with calibrations and appropriate timings of how long the tragedy will last.

I am referring to the complete waste of taxpayer’s resources that are the “digital” Nairobi traffic lights.

Let me refresh your memory. On December 9, 2013, none other than President Uhuru Kenyatta unveiled what was then referred to as a “new command centre” to co-ordinate traffic operations and crime management in Nairobi using close circuit television (CCTV) cameras.

As was reported by a leading daily the day after, the Sh437 million integrated camera and traffic lights system was the first step in the new battle to bring sanity to a chaotic transport sector and address a number of crimes.

A state-owned Chinese firm, Ms Nanjing Les Information Technologies, had won the tender for the installation of CCTV cameras. Part of the job was subcontracted to Match Electricals, a Kenyan company.

It was reported that the control centre had 80 screens and a number of telephone lines, which the officers manning it would be using to co-ordinate operations in the city.

It was further reported that more than 51 cameras had been installed within the city, enabling live video streaming as well as recording.

The IG, David Kimaiyo, gave assurance that the new traffic lights would improve traffic management and monitor inter-connected traffic signals.

“It will capture the happenings at the junctions and any traffic offences. It will capture speeding vehicles through number plate recognition and other criminal activities at selected areas,” he said.

The command centre was viewed as the final step in a project that had been started earlier that year — the installation of “digital traffic lights” in 21 junctions in the city centre which by the time of setting up of the control centre was deemed to be complete.

There was a lot of talk about how the new system would synchronise all traffic lights and remove the policemen deployed to regulate traffic.

Further, the county governor in his twitter handle said the county government would train 300 county traffic marshals at a cost of Sh86 million – paid for by the World Bank – to replace the traffic policemen.

Two months after the installation of the command centre, something peculiar continued to happen. The digital traffic lights started working alright (or at least appeared to work) but the status quo of traffic cops manning the roundabouts and junctions persisted.

As you can guess, the cops were not there to enforce the traffic lights but rather worked as if there weren’t any lights in the first place! It was not unusual to see the lights turning red and yet drivers were urged to drive or being made to stop even when the lights were green

This caused massive uproar at first and after two months, around March of last year, the traffic department gave in to people’s demand and withdrew policemen from the roads. What followed was three days of chaos.

Weakness

The withdrawal of the policemen revealed the inherent weakness of the traffic lights system. It became apparent there was no effective command centre manning the lights to manage the differing frequencies and densities on various roads.

Further, it became clear that the traffic department and the county government were totally not in sync concerning the control of the traffic light system.

To cut the long story short, the boys in blue had no option but to resume their operations on the road to contain the situation.

Unfortunately, the county government did not use the opportunity and switch off the lights until such a time it was clear that the control centre was working. Now, Nairobi boasts one of the most confused motoring systems in the whole world.

The moment we teach people that it is okay to disregard a red light; you teach them that it’s okay to break other rules as well with impunity.

Soon, it becomes easy not only to grab school playgrounds but also to teargas innocent students. Rules, like red lights, are there not to be enforced, but to be ignored. We are creating a Hector Pieterson society!

Twitter @marvinsissey