The challenges facing road transport in Kenya

  

Date Posted: 4/4/2013 8:46:13 AM

Posted By: prey  Membership Level: Gold  Total Points: 1405

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The challenges facing road transport in Kenya

Road transport is the most common means of transport in Kenya. This is because it is very cheap compared to all the other means of transport. Some Kenyans use a bicycle, others use matatu transport, and others just travel on the motor bikes while they are on the road. However, the road transport in Kenya does not always seem the best way to travel. This is because it is faced by numerous challenges, and most of these challenges are too great and dangerous to be ignored. The challenges facing road transport in Kenya are as follows.

1) The roads being in poor condition.

Some roads in Kenya are in very good condition. Most of these roads which are in good condition are either in the big towns like Nairobi or they are totally new roads or even both. However, there are some other roads in Kenya which are in very bad condition. This is usually the case when it comes to the roads found in the rural areas. This makes it very difficult to not only carry people to and from the rural areas to their destination, but it also makes some of the perishable goods especially food not to reach the factories in time or in good condition thus reducing food production the whole country in general. There are so many other places whose roads are in bad condition, not just in the rural areas.

2) Careless driving.

We have always been told by those in authority that we must never drive while drunk. However, some of the drivers think otherwise. You might find some people who cannot even walk straight due to the fact that they are drunk still want to try and drive themselves home. Such people drive recklessly and end up not

only killing themselves but also putting the lives of other Kenyans in danger. Others drive carelessly because they do not know how to drive well because they have never gotten a driving license. Careless driving on the road causes very many accidents, some being fatal while others being minor, which makes road transport a bit dangerous at times.



3) Vehicles in bad conditions.

Some vehicles are sometimes driven while they are in a very bad condition. Some of them are still driven even though their breaks are not functioning properly. This causes a lot of road accidents making road users to feel insecure whenever they are on the roads. All cars on the road should be in perfect condition.

4) Crime.

There are so many cases of crime on the Kenyan roads which have been heard of lately. Some of them involve guns while others are just small cases of peoples’ wallets and phones being stolen without them even noticing, especially when they are in the process of boarding the matatus. Such incidents make many people to always feel uncomfortable when they travel on the roads in Kenya. This makes you not to even enjoy the journey because you are keeping a close eye on your things so that they do not get stolen by someone.

5) The high fuel prices.

The fuel prices here in Kenya are quite high. This even makes the cost of traveling by all vehicles, whether public or privately owned, to be very expensive since all cars use petrol to move from one place to another. This has made most road users to avoid traveling many times because they can no longer afford to do so.

Road transport is very important here in Kenya because so many items and even people are transported from place to place through road transport. Even so, the challenges above make some people to look for other means to travel by. Though road transport has many challenges, it remains the most commonly used means of transport in Kenya and I do not think that this fact will ever change in the near future.

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