Once more on transforming Colombo

Amarnath JAYATILAKA

It is my strong conviction that without completely transforming and modernizing the City of Colombo as the finest Metropolis in Asia that the epithet "Sri Lanka: the Wonder of Asia" status cannot be fulfilled. It is my desire that the people from all around the world should pronounce that "Sri Lanka is indeed the wonder of Asia" within the next five years by rapidly transforming the city of Colombo by giving the prominence and priority that it deserves.

In order to transform the city of Colombo into a grand metropolis it is fundamentally essential and compulsorily imperative to remove the grotesque juggernaut in the Pettah area which is the greatest impediment to develop this city in a modern way. It is the biggest and disastrous monstrosity and a drawback for development to allow the railway lines passing across the most valuable prime land in Colombo city centre and further, pedestrians and traffic makes it a bottleneck when all the public transportation system of both trains and the buses from all over the country comes and mingle into this one complicated whirlpool of ingestion and uncontrollable disorder that aggravates the free flow of both transport as well as pedestrians.

It is an anachronism to make changes and developments elsewhere in the city while retaining a formidable abstractive monstrosity in the Pettah area all along the Olcott Mawatha.

Therefore it is primarily essential to restructure the entire Pettah area. What was built 200 years ago by the British Colonial Rulers were allowed to expand into an unplanned congested bottleneck by adding grotesque and ugly shops by the 50 years of mismanagement of the CMC which the successive Governments allowed to continue should be dismantled and overhauled to make the restructuring possible.

Without removing and transferring the existing Fort Railway Station with all its paraphernalia and also the Pettah bus stand, no one can imagine a grand design to make Colombo the prime commercial hub in South Asia. Therefore I suggest the following proposals to be seriously studied by experts in the National Physical Planning Department to be included in the Master Plan for the Development of the metropolitan city of Colombo.

1) Removing and dismantling the Fort railway station and to built state- of-the-art modern high tech railway stations in the following manner.

a) In Orugodawatta area for the Northern Railway

b) In Ratmalana for the Southern Railway

c) In Kirulapona area for the Kelani Valley Railway

2) Similarly the Pettah bus stand should be removed and new bus stands to be constructed in Orugodawatta and Peliyagoda for Northern and Negombo line, Ratmalana for South, Low level at Orugodawatta, High Level at Kirulapona area need to be constructed as modern bus terminals.

Once this horrible juggernaut is removed from Pettah area enormous amount of prime land from Maradana upto Fort will be available for development. The valuable land area occupying the railway from Maradana to Pettah is having very old warehouses and ramshackle sheds that need to be demolished. It is my belief that this land area is sufficient for city expansion and that the necessity for reclaiming land from the sea across Galleface will not be necessary.

3) In order to bring commuters to the Central Business District that will be reconstructed, the following world class modern transportation systems need to be implemented along with the restructuring of city development to make the city centre in Pettah combined with the Fort area.

a) A metro subway rail system

b) A sky train or monorail system

c) Re-introduction of Double Decker buses or Trolley buses

In this way a Rapid Transit District can be connected with the Newly constructed modern railway stations and the bus terminals.

Removal of the railway and bus station in Pettah will allow the acreage of land area to be developed into most modern Colombo Metropolitan market and shopping centre with shopping malls, department stores and also to build specialized markets for vegetables, fruits etc and these will then co-exist with the traditional wholesale and retail Pettah market creating one of the finest shopping centres in Asia to attract not only our own people but also the people from our region in South Asia and the travellers from around the world.

The fountainhead of Economic Advancement leading to prosperity will spring forth from the creation of this enticingly attractive and comprehensively modern Colombo Shopping Centre and the business hub for South Asia.

Therefore in order to transform the city of Colombo into the finest metropolitan city in Asia, "The Colombo Metropolitan Development Authority" need to be established immediately with a Project Minister attached to it to implement it as priority development project.

N sooner the proposed CMDA is established and the details of the Master Plan is announced, enormous flow of foreign direct investment will begin to flow in an unprecedented manner.