Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT) has faced a blow after City Hall on Thursday issued a ban on them barely two days after their launch.
The buses that were launched on Tuesday this week have been described to have design issues due to their local manufacturing.
The county administration pointed out that the buses, which were manufactured and assembled locally, did not meet the specifications set out by the Ministry of Transport and the Nairobi Metropolitan Area Transport Authority.
Nairobi County Transport Executive Mohamed Dagane stated, “We will not allow them on our roads because if we do, then other people will come with their own buses as long as they are high capacity.”
Among the issues raised were the specific features that were supposed to be gazetted by the Kenya Bureau of Standards including the bus floor design.
Dagane noted that the buses were supposed to have flat floors without stairs on the doors with wider aisles to accommodate a high volume of commuters at any instance.
“There was also a specific size of the door and the number of doors that such buses should have because when we talk of BRT, we are talking about the capacity, efficiency and time,” he added.
“We have to be careful with what we allow on our roads because we might end up in the same trouble like the one we are in,” Dagane was quoted by the Star.
During the launch, it was revealed that the vehicles were set to ferry a range of between 62 to 100 passengers in one trip with a speed limit of 60 kph.
The BRT buses are set to operate on the marked lanes such as one on the Thika Superhighway that was painted back in April this year.