Fresh ideas, ‘out of the box’ thinking required to improve Sri Lanka Railways
The sum total of a recent Colombo seminar on “The Sri Lanka Railways” delivered by Palitha Samarasinghe, Director (Technical) Ministry of Defence and Urban Development was that while Sri Lanka still has the same railway network built by the British for the specific purpose of hauling goods, fresh ‘out of the box’ thinking is needed to improve the Sri Lankan Railway.
The presentation was delivered at the Institute of Engineers Sri Lanka (IESL) auditorium, this week.
He said that the blame has to be borne by them (Government) and indicated that so many proposals were made to improve the railway system, but the government has failed to adopt them.
Former General Manager, Sri Lanka Railways, Priyal De Silva reflecting on the presentation by Mr. Samarasinghe pointed out the enormous cost of building the expressway at Rs 1 billion per kilometre and noted that the proper and most economical approach for land transportation, at least for long distance transportation, is rail transport.
He said the cost of a kilometre of railway line would be around Rs. 200 million and he wondered why the Sri Lankan Government is not considering this factor, at least considering the comparatively lower cost against road costs.
He said that long distance railway transport coupled with goods haulage should have a separate network, but today both long distance and suburban rail transport are using the same network and in the present context more importance is given to suburban rail transport. There could also be a separate intercity rail transport.
Ranjith Dissanayake, an engineer who has served the railway for 39 years, said that the IESL has submitted to the government a proposal on electrification of the Sri Lanka Railways and he questioned as to what happened to this proposal and why was it not followed up.
On the sidelines of the seminar, Mr. Dissanayake told the Business Times he was disappointed with the lukewarm attitude of the authorities with regard to rail transport as the Railway on 27 December 2014 marks its 150th anniversary and there is no preparation in sight to commemorate this great event.
He said that using his long experience in the railways he has written two books – and these informative books would be launched on 30 October this year at the Central Bank Auditorium, Rajagiriya to commemorate the 150 years of railways in Sri Lanka.
Mr. Samarasinghe in his presentation gave details of three railway networks – China, India and Indonesia. He indicated how the Chinese train service operates, where the track is a concrete base and the trains do not have wheels which run at a speed of 430 km per hour.
Indian Railways, he said, is incomparable to Sri Lanka as it is a vast network. He said that in India long-distance transportation and suburban transportation are handled separately and the suburban is handled by the local bodies. The Indonesian railway network is comparatively similar to Sri Lanka but has a longer track distance of 4,000 km and train delays are reported. The railway stations are clean and inside the stations the advertisement display is colourful and neat.
He made price comparisons of the CTB, private buses, railway, three wheelers, cars, etc and said that in goods transportation the railway is the most cost effective.