Sri Lanka to Build Monorail...

As a measure to cut traffic congestion and improve mobility in the city of Colombo by facilitating smooth access to the public, to the Colombo metropolitan area, it is expected to construct a US $ 1.3bn monorail mass transit system with Japanese financial assistance. 

According to Eng. Rohan Seneviratne, additional secretary (Technical) of Ministry of Defense and Urban Development, a monorail system would incur a building cost of about US $ 55 to 57 million per kilometer.
“An underground metro is likely to cost 120 million US dollars or more and a standard mass rapid transit system about 80 to 90 million US dollars,” he said. “The government (tax payers) will have to bear the capital cost of building the line. It is also likely that the passengers might not be able to pay the full operation and maintenance cost, requiring a government subsidy, based on the purchasing power of the people”, he further stated.

The feasibility study of the first stage which involves a line running from Malabe, Thalahena, Robert Gunawardena Mawatha, National Hospital, Union Place, World Trade Centre, Colombo Fort and Kotahena is currently underway. There are also plans for a link from Kollupitiya to National Hospital, with a second stage expected to link Kotahena to Kelaniya.

The Japan International Co-operation agency has expressed interest in finding the first phase of this project. The monorail will take up to eight years to build including about three years of pre-construction work including designing.

Within the proposed project, the government also expects to improve multi-modal connectivity in order to improve the service delivery of existing public transportation modes.

For a congested city like Colombo, the safety and environment friendliness that the monorail brings is very important. While modern monorail technology makes derailment almost impossible, the elevated nature ensures that accidents with surface transport are eliminated. Being mostly electrically powered, monorails are also non-polluting.

While monorail systems such as Chongquing Monorail in China, which is the world’s largest monorail track, the Seattle Monorail is USA and Osaka Monorail in Japan are viewed as effective and successfully implemented monorails, it is also important to recall that monorail systems such as Sydney were failures due to reasons such as lack of integrated fare transfers between local subway or bus connections and lack of proper multi-modal connectivity.

Nidarsha Senanayake, Sri Lanka to Build Monorail with Japanese Assistance. CILTSL Blog. [Online] Available from: http://blog.ciltsl.com/archives/2014/06/sri-lanka-to-build-monorail-with-japanese-assistance/ [Accessed 27th July 2014].