A section of local leaders in Nyeri county now want the dual Kenol-Muranga extended to town.
The leaders said failure to extend the Sh 15.6 billion road carriage to Nyeri town would cripple the running of the business.
Kenya national chamber of commerce Nyeri chapter chairman Ibrahim Ndegwa on Friday said Nyeri could be utilized as a transit town.
This means when visitors travel past Nyeri town then they can even stay in the town, both during the day and at night.
"Nyeri risks dying, just like Kabati did for being bypassed by highways, you can see what happened to Sagana," Ndegwa said.
Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga said failure to extend the carriage will cut off Nyeri town.
He added that this could even be more than just an economic disaster.
"It will somehow cut off Nyeri town and then it will make it very easy for anyone going to Nanyuki," Kahiga said.
The expansion of the Kenol-Sagana-Marua highway is supposed to be completed by December 2024.
The road is part of the Nairobi-Kenol-Marua-Isiolo transport corridor, which connects the Northern Corridor (Mombasa-Malaba) to Lapsset.
The Lapsset Corridor links Lamu port to South Sudan and Ethiopia through Isiolo and the larger northern Kenya.
The road is also an international trunk road that forms part of the “Great North Road/Trans African Highway No. 4” from Cairo in Egypt through Addis Ababa, Nairobi, Dodoma, Lusaka and Gaborone to Cape Town in South Africa.
The Kenyan section of the road is the stretch between Namanga on the Tanzania border and Moyale on the border with Ethiopia.
The Great North Road also links Somalia through the Isiolo-Mandera Corridor.
