Bus Service in Sri Lanka

Show of hands, please the ones who fancy travelling in the bus? As expected, I can’t see anyone. Why? The answer is pretty darn obvious, because it sucks! Every country in the world tries as much as possible to make public transport the most efficient mode of travelling. Why? Because if a person spends more time travelling to get to their work place, there will be less time for that person to do their job.

Let’s do some simple mathematics to prove this point. Let’s say it takes a person 1 hour to get from point A to point B. When he takes the bus, it takes him 15 minutes more. It’s not only one person that is getting 15 minutes late it’s the whole bus full of people. Assuming there are 50 people in the bus that is 12.5 man hours. And if 1000 people travelling in the same bus route that is 250 man hours. Can you see how much time we are wasting? Think of how much work can we achieve if we can utilize this time?

The image below shows the recommend time allocation per trip on the 154 bus route in Sri Lanka.

For the many years I have travelled in this bus route, it has never made it to bambalapitya in 55 mins. It has taken an average 1 hour 10 minutes. That is on a happy day. If they actually take off the 10 min pit stops at Borella and Dematagoda they can actually make it in this time.

Aside from the long travelling times, the bus is packed to the brim on rush hours. I’m very fortunate to get in when there are empty seats but many of them commuters aren’t that fortunate. I can see a lot of frowning faces when I travel in the evening. It’s very uncomfortable when you are being tossed around like a rag doll from the way that the bus driver is racing against the other and at the same time being shoved around by other nasty commuters.

I’ve noticed that going in SLTB (Sri Lanka Transport Board) buses are quite alright compared to private buses. They don’t usually do 10 minute pit stops at Borella or Dematagoda. It’s travels comparatively faster than the private buses but at rush hours when there is traffic on the road and plenty of people trying to go home, it’s still packed to the brim and doesn’t make much of a difference in time wise either.

Well, the government should do a better job at improving the service quality of the bus transport. That way most of the commuters will prefer travelling in SLTB buses. They should not give the upper hand to the private bus companies; otherwise the bus fares will rise according to the whims and fancies of the private bus owners and not deliver a good bus service to the people.