Will smart traffic control system end Nairobi’s gridlock?

In 2004, business was booming for Kenya Bus Services (KBS) Management, a leading public transport company that manages fleets of buses for investors at a commission.

At the peak of business, each of the company’s buses covered an average 350 kilometres a day within Nairobi, translating to huge earnings for both the firm and investors.

Today, however, matters have taken a nose-dive thanks to crippling traffic gridlocks. KBS managing director Edwin Mukabana says each bus on its fleet currently only manages to cover about 150 kilometres a day due to the grid-locked roads.

Reduced mobility means depressed returns for KBS Management’s clients. The KBS’s cut from generated revenue for fuelling of the buses, training of crew, parking, car wash, among other services, is equally trimmed.

Such is the story of traffic on city roads, ranked among the worst in world, with commuters spending an average of 56.36 minutes, according to an April 2017 survey by Serbia-based website numbeo.com.

While there has been no industry-led scientific study to ascertain the extent of loss as a result of congestion, Mr Mukabana points to past studies which have put the resulting loss at tens of billions of shillings annually.

A finding of a past study by the World Bank Group, for example, suggested an equivalent of up to three per cent of wealth generated in Nairobi is wiped out in wasted time and fuel in clogged roads every year.

Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA), the State agency in charge of building and maintaining roads in major cities and towns, in 2014 estimated annual loss at over $1 billion (Sh103.70 billion under prevailing exchange rates).

The latest World Bank study suggest a commuter in Nairobi spends an average of two hours in traffic daily from residence to work station and back, underlining the magnitude of loss in terms of productivity.

Africa’s Cities: Opening Doors to the World study, published on February 9, points out that the journey is agonisingly longer for residents who rely on public service vehicles (PSVs).

The already dire situation on the roads during peak hours is compounded by rising influx of private cars which lengthens the snarl-ups on key city roads.

PSV operators compensate for this by raising fares by an average of 60 per cent during peak hours, raising the living standards for residents.

Only a fifth of the city’s estimated 4.2 million residents who rely on the usually flashy and noisy matatus (PSVs) access their work places within an hour, according to the World Bank’s report, thanks to a deficient transportation infrastructure system due to years of underinvestment. “Heavy congestion, high rates of walking, informal collective transportation, and the spatial distribution of jobs and residents lead to low employment accessibility in Nairobi and the misallocation of labour,” the World Bank study states.

Overall, only an estimated 5.8 per cent of Nairobi residents can get to their work places within 45 minutes in the morning when traffic is at its peak, the same study based on data obtained in 2013 suggested.

This is in contrast to London – where Nairobi is borrowing a leaf from in a renewed bid to ease congestion – where an estimated 54 per cent of commuters reach jobs within that period.

“In big cities, it is not enough until you install a traffic management system…which is set up to be controlled from a central policing area by use of cameras and other IT systems,” Mr Mukabana said.

Perhaps informed by its own data, the World Bank has joined hands with KURA to deliver a smart traffic management system on key intersections on city roads in two years. The Nairobi City County, National Transport and Safety Authority and the Transport ministry are also partners in the grand project.

The proposed Nairobi’s Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) project will involve installation of traffic control technologies such as intelligent traffic lights, road markings and road signs at a cost in the upwards of $14 million (Sh1.45 billion under prevailing exchange rates).

The design of the ITS, which has been ongoing since January, also has a component on enforcement measures such as violation of traffic lights and speed limit.

“The traffic management system should be able to monitor areas where vehicles are congested and open up those areas quickly. They should also be able to sense a public transporter so that, using transponders, public transport is given priority over private cars,” Mr Mukabana said. “In cases of emergencies like accidents, it must be backed up with recovery vehicles to ensure it is cleared quickly.”

German mobility consultant HP Gauff, its traffic engineering companion Schlothauer & Wauer and UK’s Wyg International were hired on January 15 to design the smart traffic management system, help identify contractors and supervise its installation from next year.

They will collectively pocket $4.8 million (Sh496.32 million) for their 39-month consultation role for the project, the first of its kind in Eastern and Central Africa on completion.

Under the plan, the cameras at the road junctions will capture on-coming traffic through digital number plates embedded with microchips, and feed the data into Integrated Traffic Management Centre (TMC) in real time.

The TMC will have a command team comprised of engineers, system specialists and traffic police officers to monitor, and remotely allocate time to traffic lights based on congestion size on road leading to a junction.

The “intelligent” lights will also be programmed to give longer time to more congested roads on their own based on the plates they capture.

The plan, if executed as designed, will finally replace traffic cops with signalised intersections, attempts which have failed severally in the past.

“All junctions will be using signals and connect back to traffic management centre where computer systems will be calculating the timing required for them in real time,” Wyg director John Pattinson said in interview in Nairobi on October 18. “The traffic signals time will be changing constantly as the flow changes during the day.”

The command centre will also be giving regular traffic updates on various roads via a “website, road signage and social media”, enabling commuters to avoid congested roads or use alternative routes in unfortunate case of an accident.

This is, however, not the first time the authorities will be bidding to install signalised junctions on major city roads.

Former Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero in March 2015 unveiled a plan to replace five major roundabouts on Uhuru Highway and Mombasa Road with signalised systems at intersections.

The Sh400 million plan had also targeted University Way, Kenyatta Avenue, Haile Selassie Avenue, Bunyala and Lusaka road intersections with Uhuru Highway, had been identified as responsible for about 70 per cent of the irritating jams in the capital.

“We hope that it (the planned ITS) will be functional. The tendency we have had with technology in this country is that we fix technology, after few days it has been left dilapidated,” Mr Mukabana said.

The “Kidero plan”, which was a modification of a near-similar system at the same cost in 2012 and which did not materialise, fell through partly because of inadequate land for additional lanes.

KURA acting director-general Silas Kinoti said the proposed Nairobi ITS system will modify rather than remove the roundabouts to fit the needs of different roads linked to junctions.

“This system is different in that two junctions can talk to each because this has taken a network approach,” Kinoti said. “One junction can even block traffic depending on what is happening on the other junction controlled from a traffic management centre.”

The first phase of Nairobi’s smart traffic management system targets 100 of the estimated 400 road junctions, but Mr Pattinson has cast doubt on whether on rot the Sh1.45 billion budget will be enough to erect smart traffic systems on 100 road junctions.

“There are a 100 junctions selected. Whether it will be 100 or not, is still an open question. It is all down to the budget. We haven’t done our estimate yet,” Mr Pattinson said. “It is very difficult to give an average estimate (per junction), and so it’s difficult to give good figures that look realistic.”

Safety audits

The consultants have in the last 10 months collected data, conducted safety audits, identified a “suitable” traffic management plan, prepared concept drawing and capacity building for stakeholders. This culminated in a draft design for the project which was presented to stakeholders on October 18.

The consultants are fine-tuning the project’s draft design, which Mr Pattinson said will be finalised in three weeks from October 18.

He said the tender documents will be ready by December, bidding will be done from January, while qualified contractors will be identified by end of March, 2018.

“Construction will probably be starting towards the end of next year … and if things go well, even by the middle of 2019, you may see the first junction coming online,” Mr Pattinson said.

The proposed ITS is a short-term fix to Nairobi’s long-standing transport headache.

President Uhuru Kenyatta on February 9 created the Nairobi Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (Namata) through an executive order under the provisions of the State Corporations Act. The plan was endorsed by the Cabinet on April 6.

The agency, upon installation, is set to oversee implementation of an integrated public transport strategy comprised of proposed Bus Rapid Transit system and Nairobi Commuter Rail system.

The rationale for establishing Namata is based on a Memorandum of Understanding signed in August 2013 between the Transport ministry and the county governments of Nairobi City, Kiambu, Murang’a, Machakos and Kajiado.

The World Bank, in its latest report on managing traffic in major cities in Africa, roots for early deployment of collective transportation systems (buses and trains on fixed routes) to create more jobs and reduce cost of living.