Kenya has more roads than Britain!

 By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

28 December 2014

Nobody knows the number of motor vehicles in use in Kenya! This was the consequence of the abolition of the “road license” several years ago. It was a mistake to assume that the purpose for that licence was to raise money for roads maintenance because this vital information is no longer available.

Today, the only thing the government can tell is how many vehicles are added to the national fleet but nobody knows how many are removed. The authorities have no way of knowing that you have given up on your car and convert it into a hen-house.

There have been suggestions that the road license should be re-introduced and issued free of charge. I don’t know how far that idea has gone but until it is done, the best one can do is make an educated guess of the number of vehicles in use.

Now I have been competing with my children to see who has spotted the newest registered vehicle on the road. I am currently ahead after spotting a KCB – M. My 8-year old daughter thought she had “overtaken” me when she saw a KRM. I had to explain to her that this was much older than the KCB – M; that “in the old days”, registrations did not have a letter after the numerals.

Thereafter, it then occurred to me that the old registrations are very rare these days. Therefore, I think it is fair to assume that nearly all motor vehicles in Kenya carry the new style of registration.

The series goes as follows: from KAA 001A…KAA 999Z, KAB 001A…KAB 999Z…KAZ 001A...KAZ 999Z, then KBA 001A…KBZ999Z, KCA 001A…to the current KCB – M.

Since every last letter has about 1,000 vehicles then there are about 24,000 form KAA 001A to KAA 999Z (remember that I and O are skipped). The same number is to be found in each of the other series: KAB, KAC….KAZ, KBA…KBZ, KCA, and KCB.

After skipping I, O and KAF, we are left with 49 series each with about 24000 vehicles. Therefore, the total number of registrations since KAA 001A is about 1,176,000. So my educated guess is that we have slightly over one million motor vehicles on Kenyan roads.

I wondered about our national vehicle fleet after reading press reports that the government is going to build an addition 10,000km of tarmac roads in the next five years. I wanted to know why they settled for 10,00km and not, say, 5,000km or 20,000km.

My curiosity drove me to the British Department of Transport where I found that they know they had 35 million motor vehicles in use in 2013 and a total of 395,000km of paved roads. That is, about 88 cars per kilometre; or 11km for every 1,000 cars.

In Kenya, we have 14,000km for our one million vehicles. That is about 71 per kilometre; or 14km per 1,000. Therefore, we actually have more roads than Britain!