Kenya’s standard gauge railway has marked its fifth anniversary by celebrating 7.8 million travellers to and from Nairobi and Mombasa, says a Kenya National Bureau of Statistics report.
The maiden Madaraka Express trip from Mombasa to Nairobi was made on May 31, 2017 and had on board President Uhuru Kenya, among other government officials, who freely interacted with Kenyans and made several stops at county stations.
This was shortly followed by the first passenger train open for the public on June 1, 2017 and it has now become a routine, except for a while during lockdown, when cases of Covid-19 soared in 2021.
Five years down the line, the SGR has become the number one travel option among Kenyans and foreigners alike commuting from and to Mombasa and Nairobi.
In 2021, SGR ferried a record two million passengers, with 2018 coming second at 1.67 million as per the June 2022 data by the KNBS, and the numbers keep rising as more Kenyans continue to embrace it.
From Mombasa to Nairobi and vice versa, the intercounty Madaraka Express train takes eight hours, while the express train takes an average of five hours compared to almost ten hours taken by busses and other forms of transport.
While speaking to journalists in Nairobi, the Presidential Strategic Communication Unit said that the millions of travellers are adequate proof that the SGR is popular among Kenyans and it can only get better in the future.
The SGR's fortunes would most likely triple once the project reaches the port city of Kisumu and later crosses the border into Uganda’s capital, Kampala, as it was initially planned.
(edited by Amol Awuor)
