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Next vehicle census in Sinhala and Tamil: DIG Traffic
View(s):By Sonja Candappa
Questionnaires for the next census on heavy vehicles entering Colombo city, to be conducted by the police, will be printed both in Sinhala and Tamil, DIG Traffic, Amarasiri Senarathne said.
This decision was taken after the general public was inconvenienced by questionnaires for the census on light vehicles being in Sinhala only. Moratuwa University’s Transport and Logistics Dept’s Prof. Amal Kumarage said that there was no need for the police to inconvenience the public by conducting a census, when it was already available at the University, free of charge.
Rush-hour traffic on any given weekday in the city. Pic by Hasitha Kulasekera
“The University has been conducting these surveys for transport agencies such as the Road Development Authority (RDA) and Ministry of Transport and National Transport Commission for the past 20 to 30 years” said Professor Kumarage, adding that, even abroad, these kinds of surveys are conducted together with the Universities.
“I am a little concerned of the outcome of this census conducted by the police. I don’t know how they got about it. Usually, there are coding systems, sampling systems and there should not be a language barrier. It seems to have been a hastily planned one,” Prof. Kumarage said
Cars, vans, double cabs and jeeps were among the vehicles for the light vehicle census conducted by the police on Monday (11), morning. The census was just the first step of the new Traffic Action Plan (TAP), police said. Following this, a census will be conducted on the heavy vehicles and vehicles such as trishaws and motorbikes entering the city. Then the information will be collated, evaluated and discussed with the relevant authorities such as the Road Development Commission. Consequently, the new TAP will be formulated, tested and finalized, before it is implemented.
“At present, traffic moves at an average speed of 9 km per hour within Colombo city limits, during peak hours, and research forecasts that, if we continue with the current TAP, the average speed during peak hours will drop to 3 km per hour by 2020.” DIG Senarathne said. DIG Senarathne said it would take at least another five to six days to evaluate the number of light vehicles entering the city.
The police media office said currently, the most number of light vehicles enter Colombo city from Parliament Road via Borella.
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