Daily News Editorial

Easing traffic congestion

Tuesday 10th November 2015

The Colombo Municipal Council has proposed a vehicle levy aimed at minimizing traffic congestion in the city, according to a report we carried in yesterday's edition. The report quotes a CMC spokesman as saying that a levy from vehicles will encourage people (meaning motorists) to use public transport instead of using private vehicles to travel to Colombo. Through this means the CMC also hopes to collect additional revenue. It is estimated that around 500,000 vehicles enter the city daily, causing heavy congestion.

In the past too, attempts were made to ease congestion in the city, through the control of vehicle entry. There was an arrangement whereby all private vehicles were to arrive at a point just outside the city and luxury coaches provided from that point to convey the occupants to a designated spot within the city from where they were to disperse to their work places or other destinations. This plan needless to say failed to work. For one thing, vehicle owners would like to drive to their workplaces in style. So there was an element of vanity too involved. Hence there were no takers for this arrangement. Besides there is no use owning a vehicle if it cannot get you to your appointed destination. There was also the hassle of boarding and disembarking from one vehicle to another and walking all the way to your office or other destinations, though this may have proved a healthy exercise.

There was another plan to get vehicle owners to convey as many people heading for the city in their vehicles since it was observed that most vehicles entering the city ran with only the driver. Here too it was a case of vanity. No vehicle owner would want to take strangers in their vehicle even if it is their neighbours, since the vehicle was his proud possession. ‘My car my petrol” as they say, and naturally this scheme too fell by the wayside.

Instead of such hare-brain schemes, the CMC should first draw up a blue print for a comprehensive traffic plan for the city. Today congestion is not solely due to the heavy traffic volume but also due to unplanned vehicle movement. For instance, heavy vehicles including monster containers are seen on our roads during the rush hour occupying almost the entire road, their slow movement clogging up the roads, leading to the traffic pile ups one often encounters on city highways. There was a time during the Premadasa Government when containers were banned on Colombo city roads until 10 a.m., when the rush hour is over, in order to facilitate smooth vehicle movement. This arrangement too came to a halt with the change of Government. The CMC should think of reintroducing this plan if it wants to ease traffic congestion in the city for it is these heavy vehicles like containers and bowsers that are the chief offenders, getting in the way of rush hour traffic. Container traffic has multiplied several fold since the early 1990s when the ban was imposed. Today long lines of containers are seen, both in the morning hours and the evening, parked along Prince of Wales avenue leading to the intersection of the Port entrance road in Grandpas, posing a nightmare for the ordinary motorists.

No country has been able to control traffic congestion. The problem is still acute in Bangkok one of busiest capitals in the world, even with all its sophisticated road networks. The number of vehicles on Sri Lanka's roads keep multiplying each year as it is elsewhere. One way of seeing through the problem is increasing import taxes on all types of vehicles. But this strategy too has failed in the past. Today’ s noveau rich don't mind paying the heavy taxes.

Hence other avenues should be explored to control the heavy vehicle volume entering the city. The levy planned to be imposed by the CMC would certainly be a deterrent to the ordinary vehicle owner who may be hard pressed to fork out money on a daily basis, and this could work to some degree in reducing the number of vehicles entering the city. But this is bound to have a knock down effect on family budgets if the levy is to be charged on school vans and vans transporting office workers. The CMC should clarify on the criteria of imposing this levy. For, school vans and office vans would certainly increase their fares if they have to pay a levy on a daily basis.

Another way of reducing the vehicle volume is to improve the public transport service, making train and bus travel pleasant and comfortable drawing even vehicle owners to opt for this mode of transport. But travelling in buses, especially private buses, are not only a traumatic experience but also fraught with danger while the train service is chaotic to say the least. The Government, and not the CMC, should step in to deal with the traffic congestion in the city, that is taking a heavy toll on the economy, by way of lost man hours and a mounting fuel bill, resulting from the idle motor vehicles stuck in long queues on the Colombo city's highways.