Crowding Out

Sri Lanka to recall its retired centralised public transport service back on to the roads, to crowd out unruly private buses.





Sri Lanka to recall its retired centralised public transport service back on to the roads, to crowd out unruly private buses. Cabinet Spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva told journalists on Thursday that the Cabinet had approved the re-establishment of the Central Transport Board (CTB) that was dismantled in 1978.

“The CTB will be re-established by statute.

The draft law is ready and we will put it to Parliament as an urgent Bill,” said de Silva.

Currently State buses operate under a decentralised cluster bus system and have much lower market coverage than private busses.

Only around 3,000 State owned buses run the roads carrying 28 percent of the daily 7 million travellers.

The government target is to set up the CTB and put 5,000 State owned buses on the roads by end December.

“We will bring down another 2,000 buses under the Indian credit line and give it to the CTB tax free,” said de Silva.

“Japan has also agreed to give us another 150 buses,” he said