For whom the road tolls

One of the many problems the government is facing is a life and death problem on the roads.

- BY RAJAN PHILIPS

There are too many Sri Lankans for whom the roads toll day in and day out. The government needs to do something about it, but no single action can address the problem completely. The situation calls for actions that will have to be taken immediately and others that will have to be implemented methodically over a period of time for effective results. A World Bank Report, “Delivering Road Safety in Sri Lanka,” released in 2020 does not include any magic bullet solutions to the problem but outlines a general framework and a ten year roadmap for initiatives to be implemented before 2030. The report provides useful statistics to get a measure of the problem and the challenges involved in finding solutions.

Sri Lanka’s vehicle population would seem to have increased quite significantly in the last 20 to 30 years. For every 1,000 Sri Lankans, there are 327 vehicles of all types — two and three wheelers, cars, vans (identified as four-wheel drive light vehicles), buses and trucks. That would be close to seven million vehicles in the country in total. The vast majority of them, are two and three wheelers, motor cycles and trishaws, accounting for 71%, or over five million of them at 232 (two & three wheelers) per 1,000 people. Cars and vans are under 11%, at 35 vehicles per 1,000 people, close to 800,000. There was a time when state owned vehicles outnumbered private cars and vans. It would be interesting to see where the two tallies are now.