The road to improving Mahinda Chintana

L. Jayasooriya, Chartered Engineer

Continued from yesterday

In every country in the world the various classes of road are defined by the widths of lanes, median, tree line if any and pedestrian side walks.

The minimum class will be a two lane road whose width from kerb to kerb will vary with the expected usage of the road. Why has the RDA not defined these four classes of road in the terms I have just stated?

The simple answer that I can provide is that they do not want to take the responsibility for such a simple elementary

 definition. Please take note that the UDA (not the RDA) says “Road standards differ in geometry, foundation, width, surface, road signs and even construction materials.

Road system

These standards are often based on the functional use of roads and all “A” class roads do not carry the same standards with regard to above. In Sri Lanka there are ‘A’ class roads that have never been asphalt carpeted while some ‘B’ or ‘C’ and ‘D’ class are so improved...”

(Article by E. H. Premaratne, Director (Planning Co-ordination) Urban Development Authority published in The Island on Tuesday January 27, 1998]. How shameless and irresponsible are these people?

In making the above statement, the UDA approves the gross neglect and incompetence on the part of the RDA in not defining the geometry of the four classes of roads. To begin with, is the President satisfied with the way how the RDA has avoided the definition?

If he is not satisfied could he possibly have faith in the RDA that his Chintana will not be sabotaged through incompetence? I will now prove to the satisfaction of the President that on this count alone the entire road system of the Mahinda Chintana has been completely sabotaged.

There are other counts as well to which I will come later but before that let me give the reader an idea of how the minds of some people work. Mr. Abeysinghe, Additional Director of the Ministry of Policy Planning and Implementation, writing to The Island on 29/5/94 unveiled his plan for providing access to unserved areas in the Colombo region with three circles of monorail or elevated railways.

On 24/6/94 in the same paper I stated that larger the circle the greater is the area within it not meaningfully served by the circle and as an alternative provided a square grid with grade separated crossings to cover the same area he has covered using the same total length of monorail which is far more efficient and quick but what I provided is not a solution to a slum like Colombo though it might have been if the area covered was a highly developed commercial complex with many high rise office blocks.

There was another article in the papers by one of these organisations that suggested cable cars to go to Parliament to avoid traffic congestion. Unfortunately I do not have a copy of that article.

‘A’ class road

Let us examine the RDA logic of the minimum distances they have fixed to the building line from the centre line of a road whose width has not been defined. Take as an example the Colombo-Galle trunk road.

It has to be an ‘A’ class road and it therefore can be expected to carry six lanes in the future if not eight lanes though it may have only two lanes at present. Let us see the consequences of using the RDA building limit for an ‘A’ class road carrying six lanes of traffic.

If we assume the width of each lane, median and hard shoulder to be all 3.5 meters then the outer edge of the hard shoulder for a six lane dual carriageway would be 15.75 meters from the centre line.

Since the RDA has arbitrarily defined the building line to be 15 meters, it follows that people are permitted to build houses right up to the edge of the hard shoulder in such a noise polluted highway.

Do not go further how many times did the RDA by whatever name it was known then ‘improve’ the Colombo- Katunayake Road? Can those people living adjacent to this road sleep at night? Does the President know how much they suffer and hence how harmful it is not only to their health but also to their quality of life?

They suffer because the RDA has permitted them to build right up to the curb of an undefined road. These four classes of road A, B, C and D are meaningless unless their overall widths etc. are stated.

Transportation system

That is one of two reasons why the road transportation system in this country is completely throttled. The other reason is the non-enforcement of even the meaningless distance from the centre line of the road.

Let us take a few more examples from the highlights of the RDA achievements. They built a four lane dual carriageway from Panadura to Moratuwa but they did not provide a sidewalk or even a grass verge. I warned the RDA about this in the newspapers but they did not care and as a result the country had to suffer.

Neither did they enforce the minimum distance to a building from the centre line of the road with the result people built right up to the edge of the carriageway. That stretch was suitable for a safe speed of 100 kph but as squatters started spilling on to the carriageway itself that stretch became a bottleneck.

The Government spent large sums of money by employing a foreign company to do something about it. Even the posts carrying the power lines had to be uprooted and re-located but not to where they should have been because the whole area has been built-up. That is just one aspect of the damage that the RDA has done to this country.

Parking

The so-called Marine Drive in Colombo is a four lane road but a two lane bridge has been provided for this four lane road near the Wellawatte railway station. I think the Municipality employed the services of the RDA to accomplish this feat.

If it is not the RDA who built a two lane bridge for a four lane road sabotaging the very purpose of the four lane road then let the Colombo Municipality say who did it.

After this fiasco the Colombo Municipality marked all kinds of weird lanes in the stretch from Bambalapitiya going South that they kept changing.

In one of their earlier arrangements they marked two lanes for parking reducing it to a two lane road with parking on either side. They then changed that. I do not know what it is today.

I read in the newspapers Minister Fowzie saying at that time that it is a four lane road. I do not have the paper cutting to prove it. If the President were to investigate this and take appropriate punitive action publicising the names involved then that would have a salutary effect on our country. Otherwise it will go from bad to worse.

Assessment

I think that squatters will move in to the space of the two extra lanes and they will be given assessment numbers. There are signs of it already near the Wellawatte bridge. Everyone of these shacks will be an eyesore to the good name of the country but everyone of them will have television antennas. All those who move in, will be somebody’s vote bank.

We now come to motorways also known as expressways. For a small country like ours motorways are not necessary but good six lane roads of variable speed expandable to eight are very much cheaper. Even in a rich country like England they have economised by providing an extra lane called ‘crawler lane’ for heavy lorries on a steep gradient rather than reduce the gradient.

Except in the US where the maximum speed is limited to 55 mph (88 kph) to conserve fuel consumption in all other countries where the speed limit is much higher, nobody dives at maximum permissible speed for hours at a stretch.

They slow down and cruise in the outer lane to take a rest only to see an elderly couple whom they passed at high speed many kilometres behind overtaking them now at their leisurely cruising speed. It has happened to me.

Let me begin by telling the readers what the RDA did to the airport expressway. For the airport expressway, the Japanese consultants after a detailed study gave the trace for the route and urged the RDA to reserve the land and not permit people to build houses.

The RDA did nothing about it and people built houses in the area making it impossible to proceed without demolishing those houses.

Finally the RDA chose a route that ran over a peat bog necessitating expensive pre-loading to consolidate the stretch. I understand that 4,000 million rupees have been dumped into this project.

Not even the richest country in the world will dump money like this but in this case some people would have made fortunes out of this. I hope the President will check this figure of 4,000 million and follow it up to the very end so that charges could be framed against those who sabotaged this project. I think he should start with the RDA.

Expressway

I understand that either a new expressway is going to be built or the one that was stopped will be re-started but it will be a non-expandable four lane expressway. I will explain the meaning of ‘non-expandable’ later.

This four lane expressway will carry so much of traffic that it will be prone to frequent shutdowns. Once an expressway is shut down those in it will not be able to escape for hours with the result that most people, especially those going to catch a flight will use the old road which will be less congested.

To be continued