Transport dilemma: What is the way out?

Commuting to and from Colombo city is a daily struggle. The average speed in Colombo major corridors during the peak hours has reduced to about 12km per hour – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

By National Intellectuals Organization

The right to ‘freedom of movement’ is preserved in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Yet, it’s not only a human right, it’s the foundation of a healthy and progressing economy. In areas where there is lack of mobility infrastructure and services, it’s hard for people live in those areas to escape poverty. In many peripheral towns, remote areas with poor mobility have high unemployment levels and low incomes. 

Engaging in a job/economic activity which is not illegal to make a living is entrusted as a basic right of a citizen by the Constitution of Sri Lanka. Further the decision on how to access a location for any purpose unilaterally become in its own right a fundamental right. Yet, the individual decisions on mobility are constrained by the spatial limitations and interactions among individuals when they take decisions simultaneously as to which destination/location they opt to reach for. Current land transport sector has reached a level with a range of issues by which its sustainability has been challenged and a solution for the same is far from seen. 

Estimating a modal share distribution is a diagnosis to determine the healthiness of the passenger transport sector. As of today, the public transport (bus/rail) modal share has dropped to about 50%, while private vehicle transport accounts for the rest. The private vehicle registration, despite high taxation and other public policy measures, is on the rise. Recent policy changes such as Carbon Tax has had a mild impact on vehicle sales although imports appear to not be impacted. Given high income elasticity and the willingness of people to own a personalised transport partly backed by financial market support such as lease facilities and partly by their disutility of using public transportation, there is resulting aversion towards public transportation use. 

Commuting to and from Colombo city is a daily struggle. The average speed in Colombo major corridors during the peak hours has reduced to about 12km per hour. A flock of private motorists largely occupy the public road space while large occupancy vehicles such as public buses move along with the private motor cars while competing for road space. 

The Government has introduced lanes for public buses during peak hours, yet the results are not satisfactory due to various infrastructural and operational reasons. Simply the capacity is outweighed by the demand from private motor vehicles during the peak hours both in the morning and evening. As a result, excessive traffic congestion in main corridors and other connecting roads has been a usual sight. 

The loss of productive time increase costs and productivity losses and waste of foreign exchange on fuel and mental agony of those commuters and drivers are the outcomes of the present transport economy of the country. Nevertheless, rail transport services provided by Sri Lanka Railway, at the cost of a heavy subsidy burden on the Government Treasury and hence people, continues to carry a relatively small fraction of commuters (largely public workers with subsidised rates), yet the contribution to the mobility of a large fraction remains very low. 

The informal transport sector has been widening and yet the regulators of public transport seem to not be ‘ready’ to contain them and establish as passenger transport services. Instead, self-regulatory transport services such as taxi services are booming in the country to fill the gap created by the deteriorating public transport services.

Those who appreciate free market and its outcomes may disagree on the constraining the consumer choice of ‘individualised transportation’. But the amount of resources allocated for facilitating individual transportation by the Government needs to be questioned. 

A massive amount of public funds has been spent over the last decade on road infrastructure development and improvement and they are directly in favour of personalised transport modes and the market has responded to it with a considerable inflow of private vehicles in to the road space. Public transport services have not improved at the same phase in terms of quality and quantity despite some unsuccessful efforts by the Government on increasing travel time savings in selected corridors. However, expressway bus services are at the forefront of public transport services connecting major cities along the expressways. 

 

What went wrong and how do we fix it? 

Up to date, the development of land transport sector in Sri Lanka has been carried out in an ad hoc manner. Successive governments implemented their own agendas without much consideration to passenger transport mobility but with more focus on transport infrastructure. Furthermore, the absence of an integrated transport policy led to gradual development of transport modes discretely and the basic element of transport operation, that is seamless mobility, is disregarded. This resulted in a fragmented transport sector with disintegrated services. Present issues in passenger transport services are the just aftermath of an absence of a strong policy back up. 

The need for an innovative transport policy following the independence of Sri Lanka has never been raised during the economic and political transformations that began as an independent State came under several governments. Even today, their political hegemony and economic ideology are not completely democratic, and their market-based plans continue to create issues in various sectors of the economy. The transport sector is facing serious and complicated problems today.

Various transport reforms were undertaken during the past in the Sri Lankan transport sector. But there were no significant improvements in passenger transport sector due to these changes. This is due to the fact that the continuation of the transport framework inherited from the colonial era remains intact, rather than adapting new transportation plans and facilities in accordance with the expansion of changing economic and social conditions, land tenure patterns and the population.

The transport problem is still here. However, there are many projects to build the country’s roads for the future. Passenger transport services have been subjected to various issues and drawbacks – high travel time due to traffic congestion, lack of comfort, losing modal share, excess capacity, and lack of standardisation and quality deterioration – safety and conduct. There are plans to try out to solve those structural issues. 

Building the expressway network is underway for inter provincial mobility. Light rail services for urban transportation are also being planned. But passenger transport services continue to face the same set of issues persistent from the past – lack of comfort, lack of connectivity, route-based services (hence open for manipulation of speed and the number of stops, passenger load, over capacity), and lack of innovation. 

Individual private bus ownership has grown over 20,000 and operating a bus has become a private enterprise and as a result, the basic element of passenger transport service has not given due consideration and disregard the needs of the passenger. 

In this backdrop, other modes of transport services such as taxi and three-wheeler services by the private sector are expanding rapidly. Passengers continue to leave the bus and rail transport services and caught up in traffic jams with their private modes of transport. This has increased traffic congestion in all of the major cities during the peak hours. 

Without a structural change, trying to bring justice to the bus passenger by various types of ‘projects’ is a waste of public money and time. In the past, similar kind of projects have failed to deliver. Relaying on temporary solutions and trials and pilot projects will not yield anything to the depressed public transport passenger. Fixing the structural issues in the public transport is the way out.  

 

What are these structural issues?

1. The existence of several transport governing bodies in transport sector and disintegrated decision making and the lack of cooperation between them (disintegrated intuitional arrangement).

2. Disintegrated public transport service provision (disintegrated services)

3. Development of transport infrastructure focusing on vehicles (disregarding passenger in infrastructure provision)

4. Dependency on temporary solutions to minimise inefficiencies in the present transport system (lack of innovation)

5. Dependency on large scale development projects instead of making easy arrangements

6. Believing the transport problem as a mere occurrence in the transport sector and disregarding its socio-economic, politics and environmental involvement

The present transport sector demonstrates a number of situations where all of these problems are present. These are:

1. Neglecting the requirements of passengers using public transport (most resources are spent on travel centred vehicles)

2. Neglecting the nature of the passenger who uses public transportation (children, women, elderly, infants)

3. Breakdown of public transport service and public outreach

4. Construction of pedestrians and bicycle without due concern over safety

5. Lack of consideration on the first mile and last mile issue in urban and rural transport planning

6. Negligence on environmental pollution caused by vehicles (failure of the regulated market)

7. Failure to design in the public transport modes in accordance to the land use pattern

8. Failure to establish a specialist work force suitable for the transportation service provision, management and operation. 

 

The solution

What is the solution? The solution is in the question itself. The basic theory of transportation explains that the consumer demand for transportation because of the need for consumption of other goods and service. In this regard, the need is to reduce customer demand for transport, which is the key to achieve sustainability. 

Sri Lanka’s concentration of resources is driven by development strategies that are centred around main cities. Therefore, the requirements for transport are concentrated in the capital city as more and more people are attracted to the city on daily basis. The solution is to dissolve this concentration of resources. The demand for transportation can be reduced and constrained to provincial cities. 

Urban city planning can be implemented in provincial towns and set up workplaces with basic and needy public services. Along with the above-mentioned solutions, transport planning that has priority for more public-friendly eco-friendly means of transport will open the door to provide a more efficient transport service to those affected by the transport problem.

The only way to save the interest of public mass who use public transport services in developing countries, such as Sri Lanka, is to provide solutions that address the needs of most of the social strata. To accomplish this, it is necessary to launch the transport revolution for the masses. The meaning of this revolution must be understood by the people. 

It has been referred for decades that governments serve people and people needs. They ask for votes and people cast votes with the great expectations that their lives become better. Yet people have not received anything fruitful and the general mass continue to be stuck in crowded buses and trains with almost difficulties and mental agony, yet they continue to love and believe their political idols. 

The time has come to understand ‘the great cheat’ and to restore the duty of the Government. We need to make sure that a vision establishes to bring in and implement innovative, pro-people, environmentally-friendly and efficient transportation services. We need a people-oriented vision for our public transportation. A vision that provide a quick, convenient, reliable, safe, respectable, healthier, reasonably priced and environmentally friendly public transport services. 

We as the National Intellectuals Organization (NIO) strive to bring the change the people of Sri Lanka need. The first strike of our course of action is launching our vision on transport policy on 19 February at Sugathadasa Stadium.