President Uhuru Kenyatta was among the first people to announce its arrival in Nairobi with a tweet
The first commercial cargo train arrives at the ultra-modern Inland Container Depot, Nairobi https://t.co/uX6nMT6yjZ pic.twitter.com/tQmXBcuY0Z— Uhuru Kenyatta (@UKenyatta) January 1, 2018
The ultra-modern inland container depot, where the train was destined, was launched by President Uhuru Kenyatta a fortnight ago. It is a key project milestone in the cargo-rail pathway. Many new infrastructure projects dot the entire Standard Gauge Railway (SGR).
The government of Kenya hopes to achieve several things through the SGR. In his New Year message, President Kenyatta said the cargo train would cut costs of trade between Kenya and her neighbours, mainly Uganda and Rwanda. It is also expected that the train will double annual volumes.
The maiden train alone carried 104 containers which is the average daily volume moved by road. Yet the number of containers on this first train was less than half of the 216 containers it is expected to move daily going forward. Four cargo trains are scheduled to leave Mombasa for Nairobi every day.
Here are some of the figures that summarize the magnanimity of the project.
- It costs about Kshs 85,000 to transport a container by road from Mombasa to Nairobi. It will cost just Kshs 50,000 via the SGR.
- The freight trains will carry 54 double-stack flat wagons, that translates to 216, twenty-foot containers per trip with a load of 4,000 tonnes per trip.
- The trains will run at a top speed of 80 km/hr and ferry the cargo within 8 hours which is 16 hours faster than the meter-gauge railway.
But there is still a long way to go before the full benefits of the efficient rail transport can be fully realized. The SGR terminates at the container depot in Nairobi for now. This means that the cargo owners will have to take up the transport charges of getting containers to their final destinations. Truck owners might even hike transportation charges to make up for the lost business in the first half of the journey.
Nevertheless, it must be pointed out that due to the increased efficiency that comes with the railway, more people will be employed at the port, both in Mombasa and Nairobi. The railway will also bring down costs of doing business significantly and lay a foundation for faster industrialization.