Do not deny or delay the missing link

Congestion at Borella junction through Baseline Road:

by Dr. G. L. Asoka J. de Silva

Having read numerous concerns penned by Dr. Thilak Fernando, Dr. Hector Perera and Mr. Sunil Thenabadu on the prevailing traffic congestion at Borella junction, I believe it is my prime duty to divulge some encouraging, may be yet optimistic, inside information as the former Director, Engineering Services of Road Development Authority (RDA), under whose purview the planning, formulation and designing of the Baseline Project was, until retirement from service in mid April 2007. Now I am able to express and forecast my views more freely.

At the outset I wish to convey my deep appreciation of Dr. Hector Perera's attitude of accepting reality and also being optimistically hopeful, expressed in his letter dated 3rd May 2007.

He mentions about a three-lane duel carriageways from Narahenpita to airport being beyond imagination and impossible 15 years ago and how an impossible became a reality at Dematagoda railway crossing with the new flyover.

This reminds me how true it was with real anxious moments I had 37 years back on my way to Katunayake airport, first, being caught at then narrow gauge level crossing, then at Dematagoda main level crossing and finally the agony of moving at almost crawling speed along highly trafficked then sub standard narrow two-lane Negombo road to reach the airport just to be a bit late.

The current situation may not be perfect but thousand times better and definitely things would be very much better in time to come within the next five years or so, if and only if the top most decision makers are genuinely interested in developing the country as they preach.

Safety

To start with, it is absolutely necessary to have a very clear idea of the basic primary purpose of the Baseline Project as a whole and the envisaged objectives and benefits.

If I may briefly out line: it has been identified and designed to provide a north-south link to ensure the mobility of urban traffic at reasonable speeds with reduced interference in traversing through several major and arterial trunk routes with signal controlled intersections in the Colombo Metropolitan area and the suburbs.

It is not an access controlled highway and is designed to capture traffic from roads on either side of the project road and thereby relieve the congestion of traffic on these roads in the surrounding areas.

Thus, the Baseline Road is designed to carry a substantially huge volume of traffic while ensuring safety of all the road users including the pedestrians. It is really considered as the "Inner Circular" road to the City of Colombo.

Coming back to the topic of prevailing traffic congestion at number of signal-controlled intersections on Baseline Road, the congestion is experienced not only at Borella junction though concerns have been expressed only about Borella junction.

The engineers in RDA have not been ignorant to the heavy and unprecedented vehicular traffic growth in the future as stated by Sunil Thenabadu, but had to be contended within certain limitations to make "the project" financially and economically viable to the satisfaction of the donor agency.

It is hard to negotiate when being labelled as a third world developing country as Dr. Hector Perera has quoted. So what the engineers in the RDA opted was for phased out development, what is really coming through now.

The sweet news that I wish to disclose now is that we would be having two major flyovers constructed over and along Baseline Road, one starting from opposite to Kanatte cemetery and ending up around MRI near Lady Ridgeway Hospital to fly across three junctions namely; Kanatte, D. S. Senanayake and Borella.

The other would be to fly across State Road and Orugodawatta junction. Both flyovers would be four lane width to provide divided two lane duel carriage ways for the through traffic across the referred junctions along Baseline Road with two service roads at the grade level on either side of the ramps for the turning traffic.

Unlike in a flyover bridge across an isolated junction, in these flyovers, in between the ramps at the two ends, the turning traffic on the at grade level would be moving right under the flyover decks on multiple lanes in both directions, with these flyovers being constructed on single centre columns.

Each flyover would be about 1.5 to 2.5 km in length. The present signal controlled intersections would be maintained at each junction under the flyovers for the turning traffic.

Therefore additional acquisition would be required only at the ramp areas just like in Dematagoda flyover across the main railway lines where six lanes have been provided for the through traffic across the level crossing. Due to mixed traffic at these junctions, it has been estimated that four elevated lanes would be sufficient for the through traffic across these junctions.

It has also been decided that present raised foot walks would be continued right along Baseline Road for the convenience of the pedestrians. We are confident that this proposal would get materialised unless the top decision makers who talk so much on the importance of development of infrastructure as the basic pre-requisite for the sustainable economic development of the country get cold feet and decide otherwise in favour of few who may get affected.

I frankly do not think funds would be a stumbling block as the Japanese Government agencies like JICA and JBIC are very much keen in upgrading the project they have funded to maintain a meaningful level of service.

Reality

Dr. Perera mentioned in his letter on the pedestrian underpass at Borella Junction, which he quoted as "was not thinkable a few years ago but has become a reality". I must confess that this underpass was not an item in the original BOQ but was introduced as a result of a collective decision taken at the then coordinating committee meetings RDA used to have under the chairmanship of the Secretary to the Ministry amongst all the stake holders such as CMC, Police, UDA, utility agencies, SLLR & DC, CGR etc.

Although it had to be included under a variation order at a slightly high cost, it is fully worth as could be seen.

It also maybe of some interest to know that at an evening discussion session held at the Institute of Engineers of Sri Lanka to assess various aspects of the Baseline Project, few very senior engineers including a very eminent engineer who is deceased now, were very critical and were of the view that Baseline Road has been extravagantly planned to provide six lanes and would be a white elephant as there would be many empty lanes due to lack of traffic.

RDA had to defend solidly to convince them that situation 25 years ahead has been considered and that there is a possibility of even reaching a much lower level of service then than anticipated.

Chock-a-block

It is also important to note that there is clear evidence of being able to realise one of the main objectives of the Baseline Road Project even after completion of the present two phases of the project up to Kirulapone junction on High Level road since the traffic congestion on the previously chock-a-blocked main roads though Maradana, Borella and Panchikawatta has eased out to a very great extent.

This is as a result of the Baseline Road catering to six lanes divided traffic is being able to carry a huge volume of vehicles. It may be worth noting that the present traffic volume on the Baseline Road is of the order of 80,000 vehicles per day (VPD) at Orugodawatta State Road area, 69,000 VPD at Borella, 62,000 VPD at Kanatte junction, 57,000 VPD at Narahenpita and 42,000 VPD at Kirulapone.

Now we come to the pathetic situation in the Phased III section of the Baseline Project. To realise the envisaged economic benefits, completion of Phase III is absolutely necessary. However, RDA has been struggling to achieve this for the past decade or so against many odds.

From latter part of 1994, RDA has finalised the alignment for the selected trace and had reserved a corridor of 150 feet wide to prevent further improvements and new developments within it, with the two local authorities concerned namely, CMC and Dehiwala Mount Lavinia MC.

At one time, RDA was severely criticized for not conducting an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) study for this completely new 7.5 km long southward extension from Kirulapone to Maliban Junction. (This was due to a conflicting clause in the Central Environment Authority (CEA) regulations for constructing a highway less than 10 km) and RDA subsequently honoured an undertaking given to the courts on fundamental right cases filed to have a complete EIA study conducted and EIA approval has been obtained from the CEA as required.

But, RDA has not been able to commence construction work on Phase III from Kirulapone to Maliban junction, which would invariably benefit millions of the general public, due to the protest of few die-hards amongst the affected parties. Like in any other development projects acquisition of properties, demolition of buildings and houses cannot be avoided here too.

What is getting affected is a mixture of single and two storied houses both old and new, fair amount of shanties, bare lands etc.

RDA has offered a very handsome compensations package equivalent to the compensation packages adopted for all the other major development projects such as Southern Expressway, Outer Circular Highway, Katunayake Expressway etc. to everyone of the affected persons.

(To be continued next week)

The author was Director Engineering Services, Road Development Authority, now resident in Calgary, Canada.