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.
蒙內(nèi)鐵路
蒙內(nèi)鐵路是東非鐵路網(wǎng)的起始段，全長471千米，設(shè)計運力2500萬噸，設(shè)計客運時速120千米、貨運時速 80千米，連接肯尼亞首都內(nèi)羅畢和東非第一大港蒙巴薩港，是首條在海外全部采用“中國標(biāo)準(zhǔn)”建造的鐵路。它因為是肯尼亞百年來修建的第一條新鐵路，所以有該國“世紀(jì)鐵路”之稱。該鐵路于2014年10月正式開工建設(shè)，2017年6月1日開通試運行。截至2018年11月，蒙內(nèi)鐵路自運營以來，開行旅客列車1762列，已經(jīng)安全運行84．6萬公里，較原規(guī)劃提前10個月完成發(fā)送旅客200萬人次的運輸指標(biāo)，這相當(dāng)于內(nèi)羅畢350萬人口中每7人就有4人乘坐過蒙內(nèi)鐵路旅客列車。建成后，蒙巴薩到內(nèi)羅畢將從原先的10多個小時縮短到4個多小時，貨物運輸時間縮短，降低物流成本超過40％，而鐵路的建設(shè)拉動了肯尼亞國內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值1．5％至2％的增長，更為關(guān)鍵的是，通過鐵路形成了包括港口在內(nèi)的全產(chǎn)業(yè)鏈發(fā)展。根據(jù)遠(yuǎn)期規(guī)劃，該鐵路將連接肯尼亞、坦桑尼亞、烏干達(dá)、盧旺達(dá)、布隆迪和南蘇丹等東非6國，促進(jìn)東非現(xiàn)代化鐵路網(wǎng)的形成和地區(qū)經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展。據(jù)統(tǒng)計，蒙內(nèi)鐵路建設(shè)期間，為肯尼亞帶來近3萬個就業(yè)機會，年均拉動國內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值增長1.5%。建成后，當(dāng)?shù)匚锪鞒杀究梢越档?40%。
