Centenary House-Ecole Belge street that was declared the city’s first car-free zone. Photo credit: Timothy Kisambira, The New Times

Kigali’s central business district (CBD) has been declared a car free zone by authorities. The President, Paul Kagame, earlier proposed that Kigali’s central business zone be freed from traffic in a tweet in response to an oped by The New Times which stated: “From what Sunny had to write…in today’s TNT (The New Times) about CBD-Kigali, making it a car-free zone. I agree with him. Will check with the Mayor.”

Apparently the President did ‘check with the Mayor’ because in a press briefing later on with Dr. Alphonse Nkurunziza, the city head of Engineering, Urban Planning and Inspections, he confirmed the car free zone and said that initially, it will cover three streets beginning from Centenary House up to the road that leads to Ecole Belge and will eventually cover the entire Central Business District (CBD). “It’s not a rumour, we will start implementing the car-free zone policy on Monday next week. It is within the established framework of the city’s Master Plan for the urban planning of CoK. So, it’s not an imprompt decision and it is being done to decongest the city as well as create space for green areas,” he said.

“We are doing this to decongest the area for businesses around. It will also ease the process of creating green transport areas within the city. We have identified places where people will park their cars as they transact businesses within that area,”

This policy is to take effect Monday (24/8/2015) and the planners intend to continue linking streets to make a pedestrian network. Pedestrian areas will have green spaces like public parks probably in 2-3 months. “We are undertaking this project in phases as we seek to solve the problem of heavy traffic around the CBD. People will use back routes to access parking spaces in buildings such as Bank of Kigali, M Peace Plaza, Union Trade Centre and Kigali City Tower among others,” Nkuruziza added. People accessing the CBD will use a shuttle that would drop them close to where they are going.

“The use of shuttles will begin immediately, whereby, if someone parks a car at KCT but works at Kenya Commercial Bank, there’s a shuttle that will drop them on the road that joins the pedestrian road from below KCB to get to work,” he said.

The public views on this where divided with some welcoming the change while others, like business owners, saying this would affect their business because no one would like to come into town. The general perception was the project should be a thought through endeavour and not an impromptu decision.

The car free zone in Kigali will be a first for an East African city. Other areas in Africa with car free zones include Ouagadougou,Burkina Faso; Lamu, Kenya; Fes el Bali,Morocco; and Tripoli, Libya. Many cities across Europe and America have been designated car free zones.

Pictures of car free zones courtesy of National Geographic