A project to introduce toll stations on key highways across the country has been suspended, the Treasury has revealed, pending fresh identification of roads that would be placed under the pay-for-use scheme.
The Treasury said the project, which targeted to raise funds to finance maintenance of the highways and repayment of other roads built by private contractors but failed to generate enough funds to repay investors, would remain frozen as the State reviews the roads and highways to go under the tolling scheme.
“The feasibility study was completed. However, the project has been put on hold pending the identification and approval of new toll road projects” the Treasury said in an update.
Initial plans had identified key roads in Nairobi such as the Southern Bypass, Nairobi-Thika superhighway, Nairobi-Ngong, Jogoo and Lang'ata as those where the State hoped to introduce tolls to offset construction and maintenance costs.
The plans would also cover several key highways that the State plans to construct under the public-private partnership (PPP) model, including the 243-kilometre Nairobi-Nakuru-Mau Summit and the 473km Nairobi-Mombasa expressway, where motorists will pay toll charges when completed.
Motorists already pay toll fees on the Chinese-built Nairobi Expressway, which links Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to the James Gichuru Road junction on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway.
The Sh59 billion Nairobi Expressway, managed by the Moja Expressway Company, was built by China Road and Bridge Construction under a PPP model. Motorists using the expressway, which runs for 27.1 kilometres from the Westlands terminal to Mlolongo in Machakos County, pay a toll fee of Sh18.4 per kilometre.
In the shelved toll project, the State had targeted to roll out a hybrid toll system and payment methods.
“The mainline toll collection points with conventional barrier-controlled toll booths will form part of the initial construction works. This will allow toll collection via cash and credit cards,” the Treasury said in a brief on the shelved venture.
The brief showed that overhead gantries would be equipped with radio frequency identification (RFIDs) and video cameras to support the electronic fee collection systems. An RFID is a wireless system that helps to uniquely identify an object such as a vehicle.
In November 2021, the State published the Public Finance Management (National Road Toll Fund) Regulations, 2021, which seek to establish the National Roads Toll Fund.
Road tolls were first introduced in Kenya in the late 1980s, but were scrapped less than a decade later in favour of the Road Maintenance Levy Fund (RMLF) to eliminate widespread graft at toll stations.
The RMLF is levied on every litre of petrol and diesel consumed in the country to maintain public roads. The fund consists of the proceeds of the levy and the transit tolls collected under the Public Roads Toll Act. Since its inception, the levy has increased progressively from Sh1 per litre of diesel and Sh1.5 per litre of petrol in June 1993 to Sh25 per litre of petrol and diesel in July 2024.
RMLF is administered by the Kenya Roads Board (KRB), an agency that was created by the Kenya Roads Board Act of 1999.
All monies accruing to the fund from the levy and transit tolls are paid into two special accounts established by the KRB- the general account and a local authority account.
The fund is distributed to the agencies charged with roads maintenance, including the Kenya National Highways Authority, Kenya Urban Roads Authority, Kenya Rural Roads Authority, Kenya Wildlife Services and the county governments.
