Kura said preparations are now underway for groundbreaking works for the facility which will be located on a newly acquired 10-acre parcel of land in the City Cabanas area on the city’s Mombasa Road.
The plan is now in the final stages for the project ahead of its groundbreaking.
The building will house a Sh1.9 billion smart traffic control system aimed at enhancing traffic management in Nairobi.
The design of a new Integrated Traffic Management Centre (TMC) for Nairobi is complete, paving the way for its construction.
The Kenya Urban Roads Authority (Kura) said preparations are now underway for groundbreaking works for the facility which will be located on a newly acquired 10-acre parcel of land in the City Cabanas area on the city’s Mombasa Road.
The plan is now in the final stages for the project ahead of its groundbreaking.
The building will house a Sh1.9 billion smart traffic control system aimed at enhancing traffic management in Nairobi.
“We (Kura) are ready to start construction of the control centre with our engineers having confirmed completion of the designs and the land is ready. We shall move in and start construction after groundbreaking,” said Kura Chief Corporate Communications Officer John Cheboi.
He said the centre will be an integrated building with several floors housing different stakeholders involved in traffic management in the city including engineers, traffic police, cameras, streetlights as well as road management systems. Under the plan, cameras at road junctions will capture oncoming traffic through digital number plates embedded with microchips and feed the same into the TMC in real time.
TMC will house a command team comprised of engineers, system specialists and traffic police officers who will monitor and act on the data coming through, helping to remotely allocate more time to most congested roads.
“The centre will be a three-in-one where BRT, commuter rail and traffic will be controlled from. Apart from the road junctions, we will be removing some selected roundabouts as we redesign and signalise 25 new intersections,” he said.
He said Kura’s first task after the groundbreaking of the centre will be to set up 102 new road intersections as had been directed by President Uhuru Kenyatta last year.
In November last year, President Kenyatta directed Kura together with Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) and Nairobi Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (Namata) to enhance traffic management in the capital through the rehabilitation and re-introduction of synchronised traffic lights across Nairobi.
The Intelligent Transport System (ITS), which uses artificial intelligence to manage urban traffic, has successfully piloted at several major junctions outside the city centre including on the Western Ring Road from Yaya Centre through to Kileleshwa Ring Road extending to Waiyaki Way.
The ITS uses intelligent cameras, variable timing traffic lights and a control centre to observe and control traffic, thereby reducing the burden on traffic police officers.
The system discerns the general traffic conditions and obtains traffic flow data in real time; using intelligent algorithms, the smart traffic lights system allows longer traffic flow from roads with the most traffic while allocating less time where there are fewer vehicles, thus minimising unnecessary waiting time.
The systems also comes with a mobile electronic police system that enables flexible monitoring of roads. The command centre is able to identify traffic law violation incidents where they occur thus supplementing police efforts in enforcing traffic rules and regulations for safer roads and fighting crime.
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