Confusion, Traffic jams hit NMS Green Park test

By Allan Otieno

Heavy traffic snarl-ups were witnessed in various roads today morning as the Nairobi Metropolitan Services conducted a testing exercise for the Green Park Terminal.

The most affected roads were Mombasa Road, Ngong’ Road, Langata road and Uhuru high Way whose matatus were being directed to the digitized Green Park Terminal.

At Some point passengers were forced to walk to town in a bid to get to their work places in time.

NMS Director of Roads Engineer Michael Ochieng when briefing the media applauded the exercise describing it as a major test for decongesting the CBD and that they will fill the gaps that have been noted.

Major complaints were the disabled people, sick people and even pregnant women who had not been provided with alternative means to reach their destinations considering their conditions.

‘‘The challenge we have discovered is that there are disabled persons and pregnant women who may not walk to town. We have organised together with Kenya Railways the commuter busses to take this group of people to town free of charge. But we have seen  what we designed working pretty well. We took the big time to assimilate this, we will improve on the time the vehicles drop and pick among others,’’ Ochieng noted.

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Ochieng noted that they shall conduct another three testing areas which include picking of passengers, dropping of passengers, and usage of electronic devices before allowing full operation at the terminus.

‘‘The beauty of this design is that we did not want passengers to use much time to town and if you ask them it is almost the same,’’ he added.

Stanley Kimure Green Park co-ordinator however, hailed the exercise  terming it as a new dawn to matatu business which has been a subject of cartels that controls dropping points at CBD.

‘‘Matatu industry has been marred by cartels and that is why you see people saying matatu madness. It is not a business per say and we want to change that so that the investors can see their money now that we will stop these cartels from operating in town,’’  Kamure said.

A driver who spoke to Ghetto Radio urged NMS to work on the efficiency of the service to avoid congestion.

‘‘They should now improve on efficiency so that we don’t flock the terminal as we pick passengers. That is a major problem in Bus stations. It should be avoided otherwise it is a good move,’’ a driver stated.

Second testing will be done soon as NMS closes the gaps witnessed in today’s exercise.