Who is to Blame for the Traffic Jam in Nairobi?

I can’t believe that at times this days it takes me more than 2 hours just to travel to the city Centre. I remember the days when one could take less than 30 minutes to do the same. There is hardly no road this days that you would travel into and not get a jam, this includes the innocent roads that were unnoticed and would otherwise serve as safe roads for young kids to ride their bicycles and roller skating. One of the major causes of the jam is the rapidly number of private car owners due to the cheap imports “thanks to the Middle East and Asia that cars are almost to the point of being sold as cheap as mobile phones”. Another menace to our roads is the Matatu vehicles, this are cars that for a long time have been so undisciplined and unreliable. These are the kind of cars that overtake wherever, overlap as they please, create extra illegal lanes because they are in a hurry to make millions and they really don’t care about the safety and welfare of the passengers they are carrying and of other road users. Well another contributing factor to this problem is the kind of the system the government uses to create roads. The roads are inadequately planned and designed and they end up constructing none-durable roads which are too squeezed that they can’t handle the heavy traffic effectively. 

I am glad that the government has been trying to repossess its road reserves that had been grabbed by greedy individuals and companies and few road extensions have been coming up.

 However, if no proper road designs and constructions, if car import regulations are not strictly adhered to, if police will not do their jobs properly and if people especially the matatu industry don’t gradually decide to become road courteous, then we are heading to a great fall as a nation.

 Now my question will be which part are you and l playing to make our roads a better place to be for now and the future?