From September 1, a new fleet of luxury buses will ply the roads of Colombo. These buses will carry office staff from Mt. Lavinia, Dehiwela, Wellawatte areas to Colombo city.
Aimed at high income groups, as an alternative to car travelling, this scheme is to be implemented as a plan to reduce inner city traffic congestion, by persuading the executive class to leave their private vehicles at home.
Last Friday, the Minister for Transport and Highways, A.H.M. Fowzie handed over ten luxury buses to the two depots, Ratmalana and Mattakkuliya. This scheme concieved earlier by the Urban Development Authority, is now being speedily implemented by the new Minister for Transport.
The long term objective of this scheme is to totally restrict the entry of private vehicles coming into the city carrying one or two passengers.
These travellers will have to take the luxury buses now being introduced as means of transportatio. If people still wish to use private vehicles they should carry five passengers to enter Colombo city. But, the Minister admitted that there would be certain cases where exemptions would be necessary, like in the case of a patient, a wedding party, diplomats and military personnel.
"This is the best way to control the traffic congestion in the city," Minister Fowzie said.
"We will start the scheme from Mt. Lavinia but soon suburban areas like Nugegoda, Piliyandala, Battaramulla, Negombo, Kelaniya will also have the luxury bus facility."
So, what is luxury about these buses ?
"They will be fully air conditioned, have reclining seats and carpeting," the Minister explained.
The buses are currently being assembled in Sri Lanka in the Werehera depot.
From September the service will be available to commuters along Galle road. The buses will begin at the Mt.Lavinia junction and a bus will set off every twenty minutes.
A flat rate of Rs. 25 will be charged for any distance along the route as shown in the map. One route will take Colpetty junction and go through Slave Island to Fort, Pettah, Maradana and return to Mt. Lavinia through Torrington and Bambalapitiya and another route will take Bambalapitiya junction to Town Hall via Bauddha loka Mawatha, Torrington to Fort, reversing the earlier route.
The Ministry is yet debating whether to introduce scheduled stops or to let passengers get off near their respective offices, or any other destination.
"It will not harm the working people to walk a little distance to their offices in the morning," the Minister said. He also hopes to introduce such health slogans in the bus as inspiration for the commuters.
As of yet, it will not be compulsory for travellers to use the bus service. It is yet a choice.
"But in the second stage, it will be made compulsory for all vehicle owners to use bus service, or car pool and take more than five people in a vehicle."
Later on the plan is to create large parking lots on the boundaries of the city, where vehicle owners could park their cars and then take the bus service. The parking lots will be secure. And the Minister also plans to issue special identity cards for those car pooling together, for this raises a question of safety for the group travelling in the vehicle, if they are strangers.
"We will have an identification system where people need not worry about their personal safety or the safety of the car owner when travelling together," Minister Fowzie said.
He said that they are pleading with the people to use the luxury bus service as an option to wasting petrol and diesel. "By this scheme the government hopes to save foreign exchange by consuming less fuel," he said.
The UDA and the Ministry are also looking at various other options of vehicle control, like banning certain licence plate holders on certain days of the week from entering the city.
The success rate of the luxury bus scheme of course, will have to be judged in September, when it gets off the ground.
The traffic problem in Colombo and its suburbs is a combination of complex factors. It, therefore, requires a solution based on an analysis of the factors that both directly and indirectly contribute to the problem. The new administration in charge of the transport portfolio has already taken two steps: (a) to add more buses to the existing fleet of the peoplised bus service, and (b) to ban private motor vehicles within Colombo municipality.
By implementing these two policies the authorities expect an improvement of the public transport services and a reduction of traffic congestion. Through the implementation of the second policy, in particular, they expect a saving on foreign exchange and a reduction in pollution in the city as well. While the keen interest of the authorities to improve public transport services and reduce congestion and pollution is very encouraging, these two policies are unlikely to produce any positive impact at least to partially solve the issues associated with the traffic problem. If any improvement is achieved, it will certainly be of very short term nature.
The proposed increase of the number of buses operated by the Peoplised bus service, as one possible solution to the problem, implies that authorities consider that the inadequate fleet of buses is the source of the traffic problem. If both public and private buses are the only users of roads, and the passenger transport problem is simply a function of the number of buses in operation, then the size of the bus fleet is important. Under such circumstances an increase in the bus fleet could ease the problems faced by the public who uses public transport. However, there are many other users of roads. Only about 40 percent of the road network is used by buses and coaches which transport passengers.
The second policy contemplated by the new administration is to ban private vehicles within city limits from September. The Transport Ministry proposes the introduction of a luxury bus service to cater to those who currently use their own vehicles to travel within the Colombo city. A careful analysis of this proposal suggests that, if this policy is implemented, the traffic problem in Colombo could be even much worse than what we have at present.
Problems related to this proposed ban on private vehicles are numerous. A few of these are briefly discussed below.
First, this policy will apply to residents living within the Colombo city as well as to those who travel from outstations to Colombo for a variety of reasons. In the case of the latter, the vehicles that they travel will have to be parked at the point where the luxury bus service begins. As will be explained in some detail below, a critical issue of the traffic problems in the city is the lack of adequate parking facilities.
lf this policy is implemented, there will be severe congestion at the point where this service begins. A situation will soon emerge where private vehicles start arriving very early in the morning. This could create a severe traffic jam possibly lasting the entire day.
As this policy also applies to residents within the city limits, owners of motor vehicles who live within city limits will have no use of their vehicles. They pay license fees and insurance only to keep their vehicles at home. Although this policy allows some travel under special circumstances, the vehicle must, however, carry five passengers. If this policy is strictly administered even a patient will have to find four other persons to go with him to the hospital.
Second, the administration of this policy is certainly not practicable. Private motor vehicles in the city are mostly used by administrators, managers, traders, academics, people in business, politicians, diplomats, foreign tourists, doctors, lawyers and personnel in armed forces. Despite high cost of using motor vehicles, they still use their vehicles in order to reduce travel time and avoid inconvenience in bus travel. Obviously this policy cannot be applied across the board; some categories will have be granted exemptions. This will create additional work for the already under staffed traffic police in order to check whether these vehicles carry valid permits.
Third, as the nation’s capital, Colombo is the administrative centre and the commercial hub of the country. These two functions alone generate a massive traffic flow to and from Colombo. In addition, Colombo also provides better schooling, health/ hotel, banking and financial and recreational facilities than any other city in the country. The flow of traffic generated by administrative, economic, commercial and social services or activities of Colombo are quite substantial. Extrapolation of travel data suggests that this flow to and from Colombo on any week-day could be around six million passenger trips.
Given this massive traffic flow, the question is what 10 or 50 buses can do to ease traffic congestion. Assuming a bus carries 50 passengers and operates 20 trips within the city the total number of passengers that 10 buses can carry per day can be estimated at 1000 and 10 buses at 10,000. With a fleet of 50 buses this estimate increases to 50,000.
Within the two peak periods, that is, between 7 and 9 in the morning and 5 and 7 in the evening, this service can provide only a fraction of the estimated trips. Certainly, this is not going to solve the traffic problem that we are confronted with at present. If the scheme is to run successfully during peak hours, the authorities must have several thousand buses. However, most of these buses will not have enough passengers to operate during off peak hours, making this luxury service uneconomical during off peak hours.
Adopting policies to address the traffic problem requires a comprehensive knowledge of the sources that account for at least a major part of the problem. In this context, we can identify four important sources: (a) rapid urbanization in and around Colombo, (b) lack of parking facilities in Colombo and its suburbs, (c) non- enforcement of traffic rules and regulations and (d) pricing policy of the transport sector.
Rapid urbanisation that has occurred around Colombo since the late 1970’s plays a key role in the problems in the transport sector. As the economy expanded and household incomes increased, the demand for economic, social, commercial, financial and cultural services offered by the city of Colombo also increased. This in turn caused a significant movement towards the city.
Another key factor contributing to the traffic congestion in Colombo is the inadequate parking. The problem has been aggravated by the sharply rising vehicle ownership In the country. At the end of 1977, for example, Sri Lanka had a total of 208,000 vehicles in all categories including 97,000 motor cars, 14,123 buses and coaches and 35,512 lorries.
During the six-year period between 1985 and 1990, the number of new vehicle registrations reached more than 300,000. During the next six-year period from 1991 to 1996, the new registrations totalled more than 500,000 including 136,000 motor cars, 16,000 buses and coaches and 30,000 lorries. It is estimated that the present stock of vehicles which are in use is more than 900,000. This is more than four times the number of vehicles that we had at the end of 1977. It is also estimated that nearly 60 per cent of these vehicles are owned by residents in the Western province.
The third factor responsible for traffic congestion is the failure to administer traffic rules and regulations effectively. There appear to be two reasons for this failure. First, the size of the traffic police is inadequate to check those who violate traffic laws.
As the traffic police are severely understaffed to carry out their duties more efficiently, most motorists ignore traffic laws and regulations. Second, increasing traffic congestion itself is a factor for motorists to ignore such laws and regulations. In order to avoid congestion and delays, some motorists show no respect for such laws and drive very irresponsibly putting others’ lives in grave danger. Even those motorists who would like to obey these rules and regulations are harassed by those who show no respect to such laws by non-stop pounding of the horns of their vehicles.
Fares paid by passengers are the same whether they travel in peopled bus service or buses operated by the private sector. In other words, the opening up of the passenger transport to the private sector did not influence the price structure. The Ministry of Transport is still the regulatory authority with regard to passenger fares. As the fares cannot be differentiated between the public and the private sector operators, the passenger volume is the key determinant of revenue. A higher passenger volume necessarily gives more revenue than a lower volume. Although there are many other factors that contribute to the traffic problem, the issues discussed above are certainly the most important ones that need to be taken into consideration in developing a comprehensive transport policy. The main objective of this policy should be a reduction in travel. This objective in turn requires a reduction in traffic congestion. The problem of congestion should receive greater attention as it causes not only delays on roads, but also increases air pollution, reduces fuel efficiency of vehicles and increases the cost of travel to individuals as well as to the country. The reduction of congestion should therefore be the main objective of this policy.
As an initial step it is important to create an organization to study in detail the major factors affecting traffic congestion in the city. This organization should be closely linked to the universities that study transport planning as a field of study as well as to other public and private sector organisations that could make a contribution to the development of a comprehensive transport plan. The traffic problem in the city has become very complex and it now requires a professional approach to prevent further deterioration with the growing population around Colombo.
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