If you were to stand on the Kenyan national road connecting the city of Mombasa with Uganda to the west, you would be impressed by the headlights on full blast and the long lines of traffic slowly moving along.

Solomon Mumo, a truck driver who commutes between the two places via that road every week, said he understands perfectly how important it is for an alternate means of transportation to ease the road traffic.

What Solomon referred to is the planned new standard-gauge Mombasa-Nairobi railway line.