Mombasa-Nairobi Railway
The 471-kilometer-long Mombasa-Nairobi stretch is the first section of a planned East Africa railway network. Passenger trains travel at 120 kilometers per hour, while freight trains run at 80 kilometers per hour and are able to carry 25 million tons per year. Connecting Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, with Mombasa, the largest port in East Africa, this is the first rail line with Chinese standards ever built outside of China. It is also the first new rail line in Kenya in a century.
The project started in October 2014, and the railway opened to traffic on June 1, 2017. It cuts the travel time from Mombasa to Nairobi from over ten hours to a little more than four hours. By November 2018, 1,762 trains had safely run 846,000 kilometers and transported 2 million passengers, meeting the target passenger number 10 months ahead of time. On average, four sevenths of Nairobi's 3.5 million residents have travelled by this line.
Construction of the Mombasa-Nairobi section has created nearly 30,000 jobs in Kenya and boosted annual GDP growth by 1.5-2 percent. The cost of movement of goods has been reduced by 40 percent since the completion of this initial project. More importantly, a whole industry chain including ports has taken shape with the construction of the railway.
A long-term masterplan envisions a rail system serving six East African countries, namely – Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. This modern network will help promote economic development in East Africa and beyond.
蒙内铁路
蒙内铁路是东非铁路网的起始段，全长471千米，设计运力2500万吨，设计客运时速120千米、货运时速 80千米，连接肯尼亚首都内罗毕和东非第一大港蒙巴萨港，是首条在海外全部采用“中国标准”建造的铁路。它因为是肯尼亚百年来修建的第一条新铁路，所以有该国“世纪铁路”之称。该铁路于2014年10月正式开工建设，2017年6月1日开通试运行。截至2018年11月，蒙内铁路自运营以来，开行旅客列车1762列，已经安全运行84．6万公里，较原规划提前10个月完成发送旅客200万人次的运输指标，这相当于内罗毕350万人口中每7人就有4人乘坐过蒙内铁路旅客列车。建成后，蒙巴萨到内罗毕将从原先的10多个小时缩短到4个多小时，货物运输时间缩短，降低物流成本超过40％，而铁路的建设拉动了肯尼亚国内生产总值1．5％至2％的增长，更为关键的是，通过铁路形成了包括港口在内的全产业链发展。根据远期规划，该铁路将连接肯尼亚、坦桑尼亚、乌干达、卢旺达、布隆迪和南苏丹等东非6国，促进东非现代化铁路网的形成和地区经济发展。据统计，蒙内铁路建设期间，为肯尼亚带来近3万个就业机会，年均拉动国内生产总值增长1.5%。建成后，当地物流成本可以降低 40%。