Motorists to start paying toll fees for using Thika Road

The Standard, Sunday, February 16, 2014 ·

Users of Thika Road and other major highways, including the Mombasa-Nairobi highway, will soon be required to pay toll fees.
The money will be used to maintain roads. The levy follows the move to invite a consultant to advice on the modalities of operationalising tolling stations on key highways.  National Treasury, in a statement, said it is looking for a transaction advisor to guide the State on the various processes.
The consultant will advise and invite firms to bid for tolling tenders on major highways, including the Mombasa-Nairobi Highway and Thika Superhighway.


Road concessions
The transaction advisor is expected to oversee the feasibility studies. He will also make the competitive search for companies that will be awarded the concessions to put up and manage toll stations under a Public Private Partnership model.
Thika Road will be the first highway to have a toll station. The tolling firm is expected to be selected to put up and operate one toll station on the superhighway by mid next year. Treasury said there is a possibility of extending this to cover Thika-Marua-Nyeri road. Another key road that will be tolled will be the Mombasa-Nairobi-Nakuru transport corridor that will have five toll stations.
The over 500km stretch between Mombasa and Nakuru is seen as an essential transport corridor that links Mombasa port to Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and other countries in the larger eastern and central Africa. The firm that will operate toll stations on the road – which has been segmented into Mombasa-Nairobi and Nairobi-Nakuru – will be unveiled Mid-2016.
The Mombasa-Nairobi Highway will have two toll stations, at Mariakani and at the Machakos turn off. The Nairobi-Nakuru highway will have three toll stations at Rironi (Limuru), Naivasha and Lanet.
In a Request for Expression of Interest on Friday, Treasury said it needed the services of a lead and financial advisor that will oversee the process. Competitive bidding  Other consultants that will be involved in the project are environmental and social consultant, traffic and engineering consultant and legal consultant. Firms can bid as individuals or as a consortium.
The Transport and Infrastructure ministry recently said it planned to hand over management of roads to private sector firms. Funds collected at the toll stations are expected to be used in maintenance of roads, which would mean passing on the cost of road repairs and general maintenance to road users. The firm(s) selected to manage toll stations are expected to carry out the actual repairs and maintenance of roads.
The firms will manage the roads through long-term concessions. They will also be tasked with the management of road infrastructure, including repairs and devising mechanisms to get other income aside from the toll stations.
Road maintenance is done using the Road Maintenance Levy – a fee that is attached to the retail price of fuel, which the road maintenance bodies have argued falls way below the required. Currently, the Road Maintenance Levy stands at Sh9 per litre of petrol and diesel after it went up in June 2006 from Sh5.80.
A recent proposal to increase it to Sh18 has been opposed by players in the transport industry.  Kenya Roads Board collected Sh24 billion through the road maintenance levy in the 2012/2013 financial year.