Mitigating Traffic Congestion in Colombo City

By Anupama Fernando

Introduction

Transport sector plays a vital role in development process of a country due to the fact that all the economic activities as well as the day today functions of the society depend on the way of satisfying the need of travel and transport. Developed countries as well as the countries with emerging economies have shown good examples on how the transport sector contributes in developing their economies.

In Sri Lanka, transport related infrastructure improvement is one of the major focused areas of the government. However, the attention on transport service improvement is very far behind with compared to the physical infrastructure development. Improvement of existing public transport system or introducing a new transport system could not be done by improving transport related physical infrastructure alone.

At present, the people are shifting from public transport services to private mode to meet their travel demand. This is due to the fact that public transport services are not in accordance with their satisfaction. Under this scenario, private vehicle usage of the country is also rapidly increasing resulting in heavy traffic congestion in urban areas. Emperical studies have shown that with the increase of income level of the people, there is a significanttrend to increase private vehicle ownership if the government does not have a control over the vehicle ownership accordingly. Since, Sri Lanka has also reached to middle income level, private vehicle ownership will also be improved rapidly resulting heavy traffic congestion in Urban areas.

In Colombo Metropolitan Area, Traffic congestion is worsening at present on the road network.  Traffic congestion has brought about huge economic loss by increasing vehicle operating cost as well as travel time cost.

  

Shifting from public transport to private transport: Why?

Existing Bus System

In Sri Lanka, bus transport service has dominated the public transport system although its share is gradually declining. For instance, buses accounted for carrying 65% of passengers crossing the Colombo Metropolitan Council (CMC) boundary in 1985, 57% in 1995, 55% in 2004 and 47% in 2013.

There are many reasons why people are reluctant to use the existing bus system. In the morning peak period buses are over-crowded on the inbound direction on almost all major corridors.  The loadfactors on all the corridors indicate more than 100 percent. In particular on Kandy, Low Level and Horana roads, the load factors are more than 150 percent. In the evening peak period, buses are crowded on all the corridors except SriJayawardenepura Mawatha of which loadfactor was 87 percent. Due to that reason passengers who travel by buses face lot of difficulties. Therefore, they try to seek another transport mode.

Existing Railway System

It is a very clear fact that Railway transportation has also been one of the major aspects of public transportation in Sri Lanka for many decades. However, due to the deteriorating situation of railway infrastructure and rolling stock with the extensive age of it, the railway sector, at present faces many difficulties in providing an efficient, safer and comfortable service to the passengers. Frequent delays in operation, cancellation of schedules and derailments are some of the issues.

It is not totally the fault of the Departmentof Railways, because out of the locomotive fleet 56 percent has more than 30 years’ service life and maintenance has become very difficult. Reliability has gone down and consumption of fuel has also increased due to the old age and old design, thereby increasing operating cost day by day. At present more than 150 passenger coaches have passed 33 years of service life and remaining400 odd coaches have passed 24 years. Furthermore, Sri Lanka Railways (SLR) is unable even to cater for present passenger demand during peak hours due to lack of strengthening the single unit train sets and improving the reliability of signaling system in high traffic density area. Signaling system is also very old and having more than 30years life period frequent defects are encountered frequently and thereby delaying the trains badly due to signal failures.

Absence of Integrated Transport System in Colombo Fort

There available no inter-modal passenger transfer terminal at Colombo Fort Railway Station. Segmentation of public transport terminals and Fort railway station makes transfer difficult between buses and railway for the people. This causes the passengers a great inconvenience for passengers who want to transfer to another mode have to cross the arterialroads around this areaby walking more than 300 meters.

In the case of scattering four passenger terminals in the heart of Pettah in a one square km area, it causes severe vehicle congestion, leaving much inconvenience to passengers. The image of public transport is damaged with poor facilities available at these terminals. There are a number of busroutes using bus terminals and busstops in central area of Colombo. Three bus terminals are operated by different bus regulators and many operators.     

Colombo Central Bus Stand is operated by the SLTB only for the SLTB buses. The National Transport Commission (NTC) operates BastianBus Stand for private inter-provincial buses. The Western Provincial Council also operates Gunasinghapura Bus Stand mainly for a bus pool of intra-provincial buses. Passenger boarding  and  alighting  locations of  the intra-provincial buses  are different by destination and busroute. Roughly 11,000 buses arrive and depart in the Fort-Pettah area (Inter-provincial about 3,300 buses and Intra –Province about 7,500 buses).The number of buses departing from each terminal is roughly 1,00 to 1,200.

Traffic Congestion in Colombo Metropolitan Area

In the absence of a convenient public transport system, it can not satisfy thetravel requirements of the people and they buy private vehicles thinking that it is the ultimate solution to their transport issues. However, the countries, especially those with large populations have not been able to provide sufficient road space to keep up with the demand. Soon the roads get filled up with private vehicles in urban areas where road building is almost impossible. According to the latest estimation in Sri Lanka about Rs. 60-70billion is wasted in terms of fuel, time and accidents annually. That is a significant amount of GDP.

Another factor is increased per capita income level. People have changedtheir travel patterns seeking higher quality transport. This is evident from travel time measurements on the major corridors(Negombo road, Kandy road, Low level Road, Malambe Road, High Level Road, Horana road and Galle road) which show that peak period travel speeds to vary between 13 and 19 km/hour. Thus the mobility of the commercial capital and economic center of Sri Lanka is under pressure due to mounting economic losses arising from traffic congestion.

As a result, the percentage of people using buses and trains as their transport mode has dropped from 74% to 58%during 1958 and 2013. The private mode of transport has increased from 26 percent to 42 percent during the same period. Around 38% of all trips are made by private modes including cars, motorcycles, threewheelers and taxis while approximately 40% of trips are made by bus and railway. There maining 22% of trips are made by non-motorized modes of transport.

However, Last year public sector investments in transport sector was 190 billion rupees (about 3-pct of GDP) while the private sector has spent about 100 billion rupees (about 1.5 percent of GDP) for the transport sector. But most of the investment goes through the construction of expressways and other road construction and very little portion allocated for the public transport improvement compared to the cost of infrastructure development.

Necessity of introduction of  new transit systems without delay

Invthe Colombo Metropolitan Area, 6.9 million annual tripsare made at present and it is estimated that it will grow up to 12.2million trips in 2035. It is estimated that under the current policies the urban traffic congestion in the Colombo Metropolitan area will reach a staggering Rs. 450 billion by 2035.

In the light of the above, it can be said that a mass transit system is needed to meet the increasing travel demand.It should go along with the proper management of transport demand and transport service supply. The need of the quality improvement of the transport services with enhancing safety, efficiency, comfort in supply side and implementation of transport demand management measures is a must in this regard. This can only be done through introducing new transport systems with new technology and improving the integrated transport system for the entire country.

A better transport system can certainly add one or two percent to the GDP easily, which the government is trying hard to do through various other ways. Investment in cutting down waste is a better strategy for developing urban transport.

References

1.      Urban Transport Master Plan,August 2014 - Japan International Cooperation Agency.