By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

One of the many problems the government is facing is a life and death problem on the roads. 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 twenty to thirty years. For every 1,000 Sri Lankans, there are 327 vehicles of all types – 2 and 3 wheelers, cars, vans (identified as 4-wheeled 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 (2 & 3 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.

Not surprisingly, there are as many trucks or lorries as there are cars and vans. But buses are pathetic, numbering five buses for every 2000 Sri Lankans, 0.8% of all vehicles, or about 55,000. About 7% of the car and van population. That is to say there are 800,000 cars and vans for transporting about three million people. The other 19 million are to be squeezed into 55,000 buses. One would assume the category of busses includes both state and privately owned public transport vehicles. That would be a sad commentary on the privatization of public transport after 1977. That was an initiative that was not welcomed by Sri Lankan transport professionals at that time, including Engineer ARP Wijeysekara who was CTB Chairman during the UNP government of 1965-70. On the other hand, the World Bank experts applauded the privatization initiative as pathbreaking but recanted a few years later blaming the Sri Lankan failure on implementation and not the policy.

Bus Havoc

The point about bus privatization is relevant now because in spite of there being so few of them on the road, they are the ones causing so many of the road accidents with multiple casualties and fatalities. The 2020 WB report statistics are indicative of this, but the two recent bus accidents in Ramboda and on the Ella-Wellawaya Road are more telling. The largest number of accidents and fatalities involves motorcycles and trishaws, which is understandable given their size and speed differentials from other vehicles on the road. Two and three wheelers cannot keep up with larger vehicles in speeding and being small they are vulnerable to more serious damages in collisions.

Because of their size, buses should be the safer mode in routine accidents on roads with high traffic volumes. But when they veer off roads at the dead of night, not even the almighty can do much about it. The two bus accidents, the first in May, near the Gerandi Ella waterfall in Ramboda, and the other two weeks ago on the Ella-Wellawaya road near Ravana Falls, are symptomatic of the state of public transport in the country, and the safety hazards it presents especially to long distance travellers. The first accident that killed 23 people including the driver, involved an SLTB bus travelling Kataragama to Kurunegala via Nuwara Eliya. The second one to crash was a private tour bus returning to Tangalle after a day trip to Nuwara Eliya. Both occurred on hilly roads in mountainous terrain, both veering off the road in nighttime.

Accident investigation has determined that driver error and institutional failures contributed to the SLTB bus accident in Ramboda. While alcohol was not involved, it was found that the driver had been working on a second job as a machine tipper from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm,  then reported for work at the Kataragama Depot at 6:00 pm, and was at the wheel at 10:00 pm for the 9 hour 30 min bus trip to Kurunegala. Six and a half hours later, at 4:30 am, according to a surviving passenger, the bus was speeding downhill along the Ramboda pass when the driver braked and the bus plunged into the valley below. Driver fatigue and sleep deprivation are blamed for the tragedy

Astonishingly, the bus was also on a route from Kataragama to Garendi Ella, Ramboda, a distance of  220 km, which had not been approved by the National Transport Commission (NTC). When I first read about the accident, I was curious about the Kataragama-Nuwara Eliya-Kurunegala route, but the map showed a perfect straight line. That may have been the attraction, but the selected route is a shocking violation of NTC’s directive, which obviously would have been based on the challenging road geometry (horizontal and vertical curves), poor sightlines and lack of safety barriers. Travelling at night would have aggravated all the physical challenges.

And the bus per usual was overcrowded – carrying 84 passengers when the limit is 54. The investigators have also found that the bus was a “lower-standard” Ashok Leyland model that was not up to ‘international safety standards’, with poor repair and maintenance record. The requirements for driver welfare were not observed at all. The ill-fated driver and the conductor were scheduled to start the return trip from Kurunegala at 7:30 pm  after getting there at 7:30 am the same day. These are systemic shortcomings in the bus transport system which should and could be addressed as a priority.

The second accident involved a private (tourist) bus carrying local tourists from Tangalle to Nuwara Eliya on a day trip. There were 31 passengers, most of them Tangalle Urban Councillors, staffers and their families, and 15 of them perished on their return journey, 11 of them UC members and the UC Secretary. The group left Tangalle at 3:00 am and were returning home at night. It was 9:00 pm when the driver informed the conductor that the bus brakes were not working and the conductor shouted out that the brakes were not working and alerted the passengers to bend down and hold on to something. As his charges watched in horror, the driver managed to swerve and avoid an oncoming tipper but couldn’t avoid the next vehicle, an SUV. The two collided and the bus crashed through the guard rail and went down the precipice.

Unlike the first accident, there was no driver error but the private bus was totally not road worthy. The owner of the bus admitted to the Chief Motor Vehicle Inspector in Nuwara Eliya that he had spent Rs. 7 million decorating the bus that he had bought for Rs. 5.5 million, apparently an old SLTB bus. The Inspector found that the vehicle was poorly maintained and a grease leak in the rear hub of the brake system had caused overheating and failure.  Another revelation after the accident is that private tour buses are not registered or regulated; only private buses undertaking passenger transportation require route permits and are subject to regulation.

Other Concerns

The bigger concern is about the apparent lack of common safety standards for vehicles, both state and private, providing public transportation. There has also been commentary that Ashok Leyland buses imported from India are not to the same safety standards as European buses. This is puzzling because Ashok Leyland has been in business since 1955 (beginning with the collaboration of Ashok Motors of Madras with British Leyland) and is now a big global conglomerate in addition to being the 3^rd largest bus manufacturer in the world.

It exports buses to many countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, and it has plants in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka (Lanka Ashok Leyland), UAE and in England at the old Leyland premises. Sri Lanka has been importing Ashok Leyland buses from the 1960s when the external balance of payment problem started. Admittedly, the decrepit Ashok Leyland buses that ply the roads in Sri Lanka are not at all the vehicles you see in other places and in the company’s promotional brochures. If there are safety issues, the government should have them addressed at the highest level, and through Lanka Ashok Leyland where the government has ownership stakes.

For what it is worth as a comment here, Sri Lanka has literally missed the bus when it comes to public transportation. Among Asian countries, Singapore has a plurality of buses procured through collaboration with British, German and Chinese manufacturers. South Korea makes its own buses and exports them as well. Both Bangladesh and Pakistan make their own buses and Bangladesh has an export market in Bhutan. Sri Lanka may not be in a position to diversify its fleet purchases in the short term, and when it does it does not have to look to Europe for busses. As for enforcing vehicle standards, it is odd that there are sufficient resources at the Sri Lanka Customs for checking the motor capacities of EV Cars to assess their excise duties, but there are no adequate institutional resources for checking the safety features and maintenance of buses carrying passengers.

At both accident locations, access to and availability of emergency response were woefully inadequate. At the Ella-Wellawaya Road accident, the nearby army base had to send a special rappelling team to climb down the steep slopes using ropes to rescue the victims. It is not possible to keep a contingent of rappelling soldiers for emergency relief at roadside accidents, but it is commonsense not to allow substandard buses carry people on challenging roads.

The government should plan for providing emergency response resources at appropriate intervals along the new highways. These could be identified in the nearby towns along the highways, co-ordinate existing fire station, traffic police and hospital resources, and where necessary develop new facilities that could also serve the local population.

Sri Lanka’s roads take quite a toll on its users – 38,000 crashes annually, with 3,000 deaths and 8,000 serious injuries. There are many factors contributing to these tragedies and not all of them can be addressed at once. But bus tragedies can be prevented, or at least minimized. There has been a major bus accident practically every month this year and involving both private and SLTB buses. And there have been annual bus tragedies before.

Every one of them was a preventable tragedy, especially those plying long distance routes. They could be prevented with more and better buses to avoid over crowding and to ensure safe travels between districts. Equally, there should be more drivers than buses, well trained and well compensated, so that they will have time to sleep between long drives and not have to do another tiring job on the side to make both ends meet.