Nairobi News

Kenya Railways Corporation has implemented a number of measures to ensure efficient service delivery and compliance with the recent government directive on curfew hours that come into effect today.

As a measure to curb the spread of the dreaded Covid-19 virus, Kenya recently announced a raft of measures that include a daily curfew from 7pm to 5am.

The Corporation has reduced services on the Madaraka Express Passenger Service between Mombasa and Nairobi.

This is by suspending the Express train which operates in the afternoon in both directions. As from today, only one train shall operate between the two destinations.

According to the Kenya Railways Managing Director Mr Philip Mainga, the changes affect both the Madaraka Express Passenger Service and Nairobi Commuter Rail Service operations.

“We have adjusted our schedule for the Madaraka Express Passenger Service between Mombasa and Nairobi and we will only operate one trip. We will have a train depart both Mombasa and Nairobi Termini at 10:30am simultaneously. The train to Nairobi will arrive at 15:46 hrs and the train to Mombasa will arrive at 16:07 hrs. This will be the Inter-County train which will now make stopovers at Voi, Mtito Andei and Kibwezi stations. We have temporarily suspended the stops at Mariakani, Miasenyi, Emali and Athi River Stations,” he said.

“Concerning the tickets, we will not re-issue tickets to the customers who had already booked as per the previous train schedule. Customers will instead use the already purchased tickets with the current details as long as the travel dates are valid. We have reviewed the manifests for each day and the trains are able to accommodate the numbers that have booked while observing the 60% directive.”

The adjustments will see the trains arrive at either destination early enough for the passengers to exit the stations and travel to their end destination before the 7pm curfew announced by the president.

The changes also saw the Nairobi Commuter Rail Service schedule revised in order to cater for the new travel times.

The train to Nairobi CBD will depart Ruiru station at 6:10am, Embakasi village station at 7:05am; Syokimau station at 6:30am; Kikuyu station at 6am and Kahawa station at 9am.

In the evenings, the train to Ruiru station will depart the CBD station at 4:20pm; Embakasi Village at 5:20pm; Syokimau station at 5pm; and Kikuyu station at 4:20pm. The changes also saw the link train schedule adjusted and the train will now depart the CBD station at 8:30am to Nairobi Terminus and depart Nairobi Terminus for the CBD station at 4:30pm.

Mr Mainga also said that owing to the fact that majority of Kenyans are now working from home, there has been a reduction in the number of customers for both services and therefore the Corporation has spare capacity on the trains to enable it efficiently implement the 60% rule aimed at ensuring social distance.

Railways is a mass transport sector which caters for the travel needs of thousands of customers each day.

The Madaraka Express Passenger Service, which has transported over 4.2 million passengers to date, has a capacity of 7,000 passengers daily over the long-distance and 400 commuters over the Madaraka Express Commuter Service between Nairobi Terminus and Ngong’ station.

On the other hand, the Nairobi Commuter Rail Service caters to the transport needs of at least 30,000 Kenyans every day between Nairobi Central Business District and its environs.

Kenya Railways has also put in place measures to tackle Covid-19 with their dedicated response team addressing all requirements as guided by the Ministry of Health.