A case for better public transport

by Tharuka Dissanaike

I have heard friends and family complaining umpteen times about the everyday drive to Colombo. When your daily commute to work and back consumes up to three hours and leaves you feeling as if you have been run over by a ten ton truck, you will, naturally, start complaining. These days, driving to Colombo is a nightmare- made much worse by ardent Christmas shoppers and holiday making expatriates who have flocked to Sri Lanka to enjoy the 'season'.

At rush hour, if you look around and count the number of vehicles that carry just one passenger, often only the driver, you realize what a wasteful practice this is- an enormous folly that is being carried out everyday in Colombo and other urban centres.

Single passenger vehicles- so many of them- stuck in a seemingly endless stream of rush hour traffic, burning up millions of rupees worth of fuel. This is everyday reality. And there is no prospect of things improving, until and unless the new transport administration takes immediate and drastic measures to control traffic and vehicles use on the present choked road network.

People would much rather use good public transport- if such a thing existed. Many of those who simply go from home to office and back home in their own vehicles, would prefer to commute by train or bus, if decent services were offered. Certain bus routes used to offer such services, plying A/C, inter-city buses with comfortable seating, but through the years these specialized bus services have deteriorated- not improved- due to lack of supervision and the greed for more profit.

I noticed that on the Fort-Airport route, which once sported one of the best regular A/c services, buses adding an extra row of seats to increase passenger numbers and taking in standing passengers much to the discomfort of those already seated. In the heavy rain once, an entire bus began to leak all over seated passengers who were paying up to four times the normal fare to be in these so-called luxury buses.

Our train services have not improved much either. Trains are as slow and as congested as ever. Sorry- more than ever. Train services that used to be somewhat reliable now have little bankability. The tracks have not been upgraded for a long time and good practices launched by the Railways at certain times (like keeping stations clean and litter free) have simply fallen by the wayside, without adequate commitment.

We need a good, dependable, comfortable, civil mode of transport to get to urban centres and back. There is no easier way to ease road congestion and save on excessive fuel waste that happens daily on the roadways. The new Minister is full of experience in the sector and has reiterated his commitment to better systems for a long time.

This may be the apt moment to implement good schemes for better, affordable, clean and comfortable transport. The majority of people who take out their cars to work each morning will switch to public transport if such a system existed- it would be easy on their purse and restful for their minds to take public transport.

It is a way of saving foreign exchange and encouraging private entrepreneurship, under guidance and direction from the State. Above all- there would be considerable environmental pollution that is avoided if mass transport would replace individual travel on our narrow roads.