The vehicle population on the road has risen in many folds in the last 10 years due to many factors that are not within the scope of this article. However, the fact is that people buy vehicles with the intention of getting to their destinations easier, mainly as they have no faith in the poor public transport system of the country and also for factors such as “social pressure”. Successive governments and authorities have taken many measures to better control traffic through strategies such as the park and drive system started by the current government. However, it is time for the authorities to further analyse the usage patterns of the road space, volume of vehicles on each route and plan out a few more practical measures to help people travel more comfortably with less stress within the available funds as an interim measure.
We all know that due to the pandemic situation all of us are struggling to manage affairs with the tough economic conditions with cost of living going up by the day. It has become a fact that we have to curtail the fuel bill as a country, and manage fuel waste to the maximum possible extent. This can also be done to some extent by better management of traffic on the road by means of bringing in discipline among all drivers and with few modifications and upgrades of infrastructure.
So, let’s see how we could curb traffic on the road without much of an investment by managing affairs within our means leaving aside the fancy luxury of doing up investments such as overhead bridges and so on specially in Colombo city until we are financially able to afford such luxury.
I like to highlight one good example here. Just look at the entrance from the Elvitigala Mawatha, to the high-level road at Kirulapone. This is the point that gets congested regularly when you drive on a peak hour of the day through this point. This junction has a large CEB transformer house on the side when you try to turn towards Nugegoda. But there is also a side lane of, say 20-30ft that is not unutilised for vehicular traffic for some reason. So it is a simple exercise to expand the left turn lane to direct traffic here and maybe also gain some more space by shifting the transformer. If this is done the traffic flow can be improved by at a further 30- 40% in my view and this can be done with minimum investment without waiting for a mega flyover to come up which may be the ideal solution. The second aspect is to complete the smaller lanes that can take traffic faster. For example, the Railway Avenue road connecting the High-Level road to the Nawala area and the Poowarama road that will avoid traffic having to run through the Nugegoda junction has to be done up fast and made use of. These roads had been under repair for over 4-5 years and contribute to heavy traffic along the High-Level road most times. In addition to this the Poorwarama road that can carry a heavy load of traffic had also been under repair for over the same period inconveniencing the public and no authority had looked into this so far.
Same as above it is worthwhile that a committee be appointed for each major township for traffic management so that practical ways of how to curb traffic are proposed by them other than the authorities taking decisions without fully understanding the practicality in the field.