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Southern Expressway ‘toll’ to hit Rs 1 bn mark soon

The Southern Expressway ‘toll’ revenue is likely to reach the Rs. one billion by next February, just one year since its operation.

The country’s first highway from Kottawa to Galle covering a distance of 96 km has already earned over Rs 850 million up to now, a senior official from the Road Development Authority said.


The Southern highway. Picture by Saliya Rupasinghe

An official of the Road Development Authority (RDA) said the best months in terms of income has been the holiday months. “We earned approximately Rs 80 million in the months of August and April,” he said.

The Southern Expressway is one of the most profitable government ventures that brought quick revenues on investment of US $ 700 million. In addition the project has helped to ease traffic congestion in the Galle Road. However, heavy vehicle drivers seem to find the toll slightly inconveniencing.

According to the official, this will be tended to shortly by the government.

“It has come to our attention that the amount of heavy vehicles using the highway is at a very low magnitude and therefore the government is discussing on reducing the fee on heavy vehicles, however until that happens there will be no reduction of the travellers' fee,” another senior official of the RDA said.

“We are also discussing on adding certain improvements to ease the travelling on the highway, however it is too early to comment upon that,” he said. Commenting on the progress of the on going extension up to Matara, he said that it will be opened by end of next year.

“Though it is behind schedule, we are confident that it can be ready by the end of next year. The total added distance from Galle would be 35 km and the ending point would be Matara.

Bringing the total distance to 126 km and the travel time from Colombo to Matara will be one and half hours as against the preset four hour journey. According to the senior official of the RDA, the third stage of the expressway up to Hambantota which is 75 km in distance is at the design stage.

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