Recently, the Executive Director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) Ms Jennifer Musisi Semakula held a simulated launch of the projected commuter train services from the railway station in the city centre to Namanve.
This endeavor is one of the means aimed at easing some of the transport sector challenges including traffic jams.
It is pertinent to note that the traffic jams in Kampala and its environs are a social and economic menace, affecting the day-to-day human activities through delays on the roads and also negatively impacting on the country’s economy, with estimated losses tipping the hundreds of millions scale every day.
So, that is why any effort by the different stakeholders aimed at reversing this road menace should be lauded.
However, there are hiccups to note and manage – the passenger wagons and the engines displayed at the simulated launch were medieval and this might become disturbing to some prospective passengers.
Without doubt there is need for the planners to appear to be in a continuous state of progress; adapting the latest trends that can help them mitigate the challenges and tricky endeavors that might arise in the process of trying to realign the transport system around the city.
But there has been little mention of acquiring new and more technologically advanced passenger wagons and engines, and that is one of the reasons that is likely to send the KCCA/RVR bid to ease the transport challenges around the city into an early tailspin.
This is because most people who own cars and drive to town to work would be hard-pressed to abandon the comfort of their vehicles for the type of wagons that Ms Musisi rode on that particular day.
Otherwise, the move is one step in the right direction.
