Financial Times

Railways urged to withdraw from long distance routes
By Quintus Perera
Passenger rail tariffs should be revised to cover operating costs by falling in line with bus fares on parallel bus routes also adjusting season ticket prices to recover 20 round trips of the normal fare per month were some of the suggestions made by Engineer D. L. D. K. Wijewardana at a public meeting in Colombo.

Delivering the inaugural D. B. Rampala Memorial Lecture 2003, at the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka auditorium, Wijewardana speaking on 'Where should the Railway Go from Here' said that political meddling and wrong executive decisions have increased capital cost while revenue from operations did not cover even the operating costs in which average train travel is subsidized by 400 to 600 percent.
He said that though there were slight losses from 1935 to 1940, upto 1945 the Railway was recording healthy profits. The losses from 1946 up till about 1985 were within 20 to 30 percent but then onwards losses were recurring exceeding 500 percent.

He said that though Railways the world over suffered losses, it was not in this magnitude. In the face of such unprecedented losses, Wijewardana urged the authorities to make a critical study of the sources and the causes of these losses and to find ways and means to eliminate or reduce them.

Wijewardana pinpointed several instances of wrong decisions that accounted for the loss of billions of rupees to the Railway. Twenty-five flat container wagons purchased in 1980 were never used but suppliers paid millions. The installment payments on the purchase on the same year of extra large consignment of Rumanian coaches, Rs. 10 million a piece, in excess to the normal requirements is still being paid.

Three hundred passenger coaches turned out locally in the mid 1980s costing Rs. 1.2 million each were never used and would now be rotting. Timber sleepers imported at Rs. 40 million were a failure. His advice was not to make any further investments for freight transport but expand suburban services by extending the limits with more radial lines from Colombo to cater to areas like Kotte, Battaramulla, Piliyandala, Kesbawa, Bandaragama, Horana etc.

The Sri Lankan Railway network limited to 1,300 Km is a constraint to operate economically. The differing terrain too further complicate the smallness as suburban network requires one type of rolling stock, upcountry another type and the flat terrain requiring yet another type. Wijewardana said that matching the rolling stock to suit each terrain did not allow the maximum utilization to be derived from the deployed rolling stock.

Locomotives that could be operated for longer hours would be under-utilized on some occasions to only 25 percent. In the case of Indian Railway a passenger train from Madras to Calcutta takes about two days to reach its destination giving a utilization of almost 100 percent.

He pointed out that the competition from road transport was severe. The upcountry railway section was built to transport tea, but today not a single kilo of tea is transported by train, because heavy loading trucks and buses are available for long haul freight and passenger transport and it offers flexible and express door-to-door freight transport at very competitive rates.

Even the affluent traveler who hitherto used the railway is now attracted to luxury vehicles and buses. Construction of expressways would also be a further threat to railway. The direct investment to purchase rolling stock to carry 500 passengers is Rs. 250 million as against Rs. 30 million for the bus transport. If the life span of the locomotive would be double the motor vehicle the cost of motor transport then would be only Rs. 60 million. Thus Wijewardana pointed out that it would be logical for the Railway to withdraw from long distance operations, to save billions on capital expenditure. The money thus saved could be utilized to build expressways.

Wijewardana also spoke extensively of the versatality of Eng B D Rampala who served the Railway Department as the General Manager for 15 long years, joining the service in 1949 and leaving it in 1970. He inherited a steam locomotive driven railway and converted it to 100 percent diesel loco driven railway within his tenure. He was instrumental in introducing popular express trains like Ruhunu Camera, Yaldevi, Udaratamenike etc.

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