IMPROVING PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Following are three paragraphs from an article written by Professor Amal Kumarage of the Department of Transport and Logistics Management, University of Moratuwa and published in the Daily FT last week. These three paragraphs throw light about a large part of Sri Lanka’s fuel crisis and thereby point to part of the solution to it.
“Around 76% of our fuel consumption is used for public transportation purposes. 51% of that is used by cars, pick-ups, and SUVs, while 31% is by motorcycles and three-wheelers. Public transport which includes 59,000 buses and private coaches (25,000 private and SLTB buses) carrying half the number of passengers, consumes only 514 million litres of diesel or 17% of the fuel used for passenger mobility. The railway which transports 5% of passengers burns up the other 1%. 

“Train is the most fuel-efficient mode of passenger transport in Sri Lanka. It is 8-9 times more fuel-efficient than an average car, while the bus is 6-7 times more efficient. Amongst private transportation, the most efficient is the motorcycle, yet it is three times less efficient than a bus. Large private vehicles over 1500 cc, unless they are hybrid or electric, are the heaviest fuel burners. In a fleet of over one million passenger cars, pick-ups and SUVs, we have only 5,000 or less electric vehicles and some 200,000 hybrid vehicles. This means over 80% of our cars, pick-ups and SUVs are not fuel efficient. Other passenger vehicles, which make up 4 million, use only diesel or petrol. 

“Other countries with the same problem as ours have already and correctly identified the need to control inefficient private vehicles in order to manage their fuel consumption, environmental pollution, and road congestion. Sri Lanka needs to urgently follow suit; and the beginning of identifying and minimizing the problem is bringing about a policy option, or in Sri Lanka’s case, more of a policy reversal. If Sri Lanka were to implement Singapore’s policy of improving public transport which is one of the most convenient and does 85% of all trips, we would be able to reduce 1200 million litres of fuel, which is 42% of the fuel used for passenger transport. At today’s fuel prices, our savings would be US$ 120 million per month or around 2-3 shiploads (40,000 MT) of fuel per month. Since better public transport means less demand for road space, we can reduce a further US$ 100 to US$ 200 million per month, by not having to build new roads, and at the same time reduce road congestion.” 

According to Prof. Kumarage, 51% of fuel used by the transport sector is eaten up by cars, pick-ups, and SUVs which carry one or two passengers in each of them in most cases, while buses and trains which are used by millions of ordinary passengers consume only 18%. An interesting factor is that the train service consumes only one percent of fuel used by the entire transport sector. The percentage of fuel used by a small number of people in their cars, pick-ups, and SUVs amounts to 38% of overall fuel consumption of the country. 

Nobody can, and/or should find fault with certain people in our society, as they have the affordability to buy a luxury vehicle, but the societal cost of this system is huge and worrying and thereby cannot be ignored. Environmental pollution, road congestion and the resultant millions of man hours wasted on the road each day are alarming facts among those societal costs. 

However, will the affluent society prefer to use public transport against their usual vehicles just because of these facts? Or can any government force them to do so?  The several kilometre-long fuel queues are the answer for these questions. Can we find a man or a woman who has not travelled in a bus for the past five years having chosen to do so owing to the current fuel crisis? Again we get an emphatic “no” as the answer. 

No decent person, except for a fun lover, would like to travel in a bus or a train, if he has an alternative solution. Buses and trains in Sri Lanka are overcrowded, filthy, some are dilapidated, the crew in busses are mostly less educated, extremely rude and quarrelsome, and they often cheat the passengers. Time tables are not properly followed by buses and trains and especially the buses stop at midway halts for a long time leaving the helpless passengers perspired and frustrated.  Sometimes one has to wait for hours at railway stations for an overcrowded train. Sometimes buses take more than an hour to travel a distance of about 10 km. In fact, these facts further drive the passengers away from using public transport to buy a vehicle or to hire a vehicle which is also added to the fleet on already congested roads. 

Media had pointed out these facts about public transport thousands of times, but the transport ministers of the central government or the nine provincial councils never even bothered to correct the situation. Even after the current economic crisis, we cannot expect them to act. This could be rectified only after a complete overhaul of our political system and thereby the administrative mechanism.