Its not our best moment but atleast we tried to balance between Conservation and development.. When you get closer to CBD in Nairobi land and property get very expensive, 1 acer could cost you as much as between $2million to $6 Million.... The bridge through NNP was the cheapest and least impactive option, with the lowest yearly maintanance cost...
The foot print of each of those pillars in terms of sq meters x number of bridges is about 4,046 Square Meters which is about 0.0040468564 Square Kilometers while The whole of NNP is 117.21 km2 So on the ground interms of physical impact, The over 200 bridge pillars crossing the NNP is less than 1% of the totals space....
But those bridges and the compensation paid to Kenya Wildlife Service for environmental damage was not cheap, but if the SGR had chose to completely avoid NNP, the cost of the SGR going through Nairobi would have been close to a billion.
Route 3,4 (In
red and
light blue) were chosen as the best option due to lower maintenance cost (when the line begins operation) and overall lower capital cost..
Route
Option 1 would have run right at the edge of the border of the National park but would have also required an underground tunnel, Also the route would have required the greatest maintenance cost which was estimated would have been $2 million more than all the other options.... For that section between Nairobi Rail station Up to ng'ong . The line would have also have to pass throught ngong forest which is much smaller than NNP
From the official EISA report
Route Option 1: Nairobi South Station-Langata-Kibera-Dagoretti-Karen-NgongKamangu (Orange Line in Figure 1)
......before entering an underground tunnel after the Carnivore Restaurant to the south of Langata Road near the Langata Army Barracks. It will then cross Langata Road still in the tunnel above the Langata Cemetery and take a sharp north-eastern turn to the south of the cemetery through Kibera and then turn north on an overpass bridge over the Kibera area and then cross the busy Ngong Road.From there, the railway line will maintain a western direction on an embankment to the north of Dagoretti Market and follow the oil pipeline corridor inside the Ngong Forest to the east of Karen...
....
The estimated construction cost for this route is about $674 million. The route would have an additional annual operational cost of 2.12 million $ compared to other 6 proposed routes. Route option 1 has a higher social impact due to the level of public disturbance during the SGR construction as a result of the high number of key utility crossings (roads, power lines, narrow gauge railway). The operation phase will have a large number of SGR noise and vibration receptors.
Anyway, This is the tabular summary of the routeoptions
For that 40km length from Nairobi Station up to ngong tunnel, the better option was between option 3 and/or 4, because they required the least capital cost and also had the lowest operational cost estimate, That 40km section alone costed $500 million !!! imagine what would have been the cost if they had decided to demolish structures along Mombasa road to construct the rail or dug a tunnel below Nairobi..