Nairobi News

HustleNews

City residents to ride on ‘soot-free’ buses from next year


Nairobi residents will be among the first people to ride on ‘soot-free’ buses after the world’s largest engine manufacturers struck a deal to sale buses equipped with low emissions technologies.

Nairobi has been listed among 20 world cities that will benefit from the ‘soot-free’ engine technology that will be available in 2018.

The 20 megacities include Nairobi, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Bogotá, Sao Paulo and Jakarta.

Others are Abidjan, Accra, Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Casablanca, Dar es Salaam, Dhaka, Istanbul, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Lagos, Lima, Manila, Mexico City, Nairobi, Santiago, Sao Paulo, and Sydney.

CLIMATE CHANGE

The deal by the world’s four engine manufacturing giants, BYD, Cummins, Scania and Volvo Buses, is meant to tackle climate change and air pollution.

The commitment was announced Wednesday at the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) Clean Buses for Clean Air workshop in Paris.

This comes at a time Nairobi is seeking ways to decongest the city by introducing mass transit buses to operate on circular routes by connecting all termini to CBD and Upper Hill.

The county still lacks infrastructure required to run the mass transits buses on scheduled timings.

In August 2016, City Shuttle introduced mass transit vehicles that have since been plying in various parts of the city, but its impact is yet to be felt.