Motorists plying the proposed 440-kilometre Nairobi-Mombasa Expressway will pay between Sh12 and Sh13 per kilometre, making it cheaper than the shorter toll road in the capital that levies an estimated Sh18 for a similar distance.
The road is being developed by Usahihi Expressway Limited, which is backed by US-based Everstrong Capital, on a public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement for $3.6 billion (Sh464.9 billion).
Although the Nairobi Expressway does not charge per kilometre and the charges vary depending on the vehicle class and the entry and exit points, travelling in a saloon car for the 27-kilometre stretch from Mlolongo to Westlands attracts a Sh500 charge, translating to Sh18.5 per kilometre.
A motorist covering the entire stretch of the new road to Mombasa will thus part with at least Sh5,280, which will apply for all classes of vehicles.
This is in contrast to the Nairobi Expressway, where the base toll is applicable only to saloon cars.
Larger vehicles, classified as light vehicles with two axles and a high bonnet, and heavy vehicles with fewer than four and more than four axles, attract multiples of 1.5, four and five times the base toll, respectively.
Former US ambassador to Kenya and Usahihi Chairman Kyle McCarter said on Monday that the toll charges on the proposed road could come down if the firm can shrink the construction cost of the project whose groundbreaking is anticipated in the first quarter of next year.
“The toll charges will be in the neighbourhood of Sh12 to Sh13 a kilometre. As you know right now, the current expressway is Sh18; it started at Sh13 now it’s Sh18. We’re going to be below what the current expressway is charging,” said McCarter, adding that the estimate is not definite.
“We’re optimising that toll rate to lower the charge as much as we can by lowering the cost of construction and lowering the cost of capital. The more we save, the more that toll rate goes down.”
Mr McCarter said the entire stretch of the road will have seven toll stations, with additional facilities such as charging stations for electric vehicles.
The firm, he said, will spend around $100 million (Sh12.9 billion) in compensating landowners out of the $3.6 billion (Sh464.9 billion) assessed total cost of the project.
“The Kenyan government is not providing us with land for this road. Usahihi is actually purchasing the land, and we will purchase around $100 million worth of land. It’s hard to say the acreage right now because we’re still trying to optimise the design,” he said.
The ex-ambassador spoke during the release of the feasibility study of the project in Nairobi, where he said the consortium hopes to receive approvals from the Treasury’s PPP unit in the next two months and obtain financial close by the end of the year in readiness for groundbreaking in early 2026.
Usahihi signed an agreement in February this year to kick-start the fundraising of $1 billion (Sh129.1 billion) from local pension funds, a key step in the development of the toll highway that seeks to reduce the travel duration between Nairobi and Mombasa to 4.5 hours from upwards of eight hours.
CPF Capital and Advisory was picked to offer transaction advisory and placement services and is expected to mobilise the $1 billion portion of funding for the project from the domestic market by close of this year.
The US firm will operate the road for 30 years before returning it to the government and is banking on trucks that form the majority of the traffic on the route to generate an estimated 75 percent of revenues from the toll road.
