Why Does Building More Roads Worsen Nairobi Traffic?

Stephen Jennings says Nairobi has done what everybody does with traffic. The city has built more and more road capacity. More capacity creates more demand, so the new roads achieve nothing. The extra capacity has clogged the center of the city more and more.

Congestion charges should be used in Nairobi, as they should be everywhere, but they are harder to do in low-tech settings. Asked whether smartphones can handle the job, Stephen Jennings says the problems are technically easy and politically complicated. People try to blame the technology. The technology exists, was developed a long time ago, and is ubiquitous. The political will to apply the technology is missing. The city will get more and more congested.

Most of the rest of the developing world has been through exactly the same problems. The problems are 99 percent problems of governance. Water, power, and municipal transport are governance problems, not technical problems. The urban realm can be addressed. In his view, the governance issues in Nairobi and in most of sub-Saharan Africa mean the problems will not be solved for the next 25 years at least. The result is demand for new modern urban environments.