Sri Lanka Railways Forum

The railway network of Sri Lanka consists of 1,449 km. Railways contribute around 5% of passenger transport and 2% of goods transport. Though the accessibility to railway is not spread throughout the country it carries about 64 million passengers and almost 1.6 million metric tones of freight per annum, stated the Ministry of Finance and Planning Report 2007.

Railways had been identified as economical mode of transport for passenger as well as good transport. It is planned to increase share of passenger transport from 5% to 10% and share of freight transport from 2% to 10% by 2010. To achieve the target the Government expects to invest on railways, especially for rehabilitation of the existing track, extension of track, rehabilitating of signaling system, procurement of power sets, locomotives and railway carriages.

The Government of the Peoples Republic of China, through the Exim Bank of China had provided two concessional loans of approximately US $38.5 million for the Procurement of 15 Diesel Multiple Units (DMU) and approximately US $27 million for the Procurement of 100 Passenger Carriages for Sri Lanka Railways, the report stated.

The procurement of DMUs will strengthen the Colombo suburban train service. The present available fleet of 35 sets is hardy sufficient to provide any satisfactory service and the new units will increase both the train capacity and the frequency of train operations. Due to the non-availability of sufficient number of passenger carriages, the number of train operations is also limited to around 520 per day which is inadequate to meet the present demand.The procurement of 100 passenger carriages will alleviate the existing capacity constrains of trains and prolong the life of existing fleet by reducing the pressure on it. The new 100 passenger carriages will be utilized mainly to strengthen long destination and intercity services. The procurement of 15 DMUs and 100 passenger carriages will improve the railway service substantially. It will also reduce the congestion on roads by diverting commuters from road to rail transport.

By Charumini De Silva

Source: The Island

Tags: china, freight transport, goods transport, intercity services, passenger carriages, passenger transport, railway carriages, railway network, railway service, satisfactory service, signaling system, sri lanka railways, suburban train service, system procurement, target, train operations

                            

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