Toll collection to maintain the Expressway

"The RDA is ever ready to take up future challenges in building expressways in Sri Lanka, especially with the experience of constructing the first ever E Grade road in the country, the Southern Expressway, said the Chairman of the Road Development Authority (RDA), R.W.R. Pemasiri. The country is now poised to go for many more expressways."

The RDA is now in the process of constructing the Colombo - Katunayake Expressway and Colombo Outer Circular Road. Apart from that RDA is expecting to extend the Southern Expressway further upto Matara by 2013 and then go upto Hambantota in the near future. Colombo-Kandy Expressway is also in the agenda.

"Therefore, we are moving towards a challenging situation with regard to the road network in the country. Earlier we were maintaining other roads. But for the expressway we have to pay our attention 24 hours a day. For other roads we did not have to pay much attention. But for this we had to commit ourselves round the clock", he said.

"We trained our staff. We trained them how to make use of this road, how to issue tickets, how to charge the fees. We are deploying 500 RDA staff for this and the Police will also deploy over 500 personnel for the security and monitoring the vehicular traffic", he added.

Road safety has become the prime concern of the RDA as the country is above to have the expressway experience but confident that Sri Lankan drivers will adapt to this system very fast.

"This is the first time Sri Lankan drivers will use an expressway in Sri Lanka. They are not trained for this properly. Therefore, they have to adhere to lane discipline strictly. That will take little time for us to show them. The majority of Sri Lankans are educated and intelligent people. Many of our drivers were employed in other countries. Therefore, I think they will pick up fast. Till then we have take it up as a challenge", the RDA Chairman said.

"Since vehicles are expected to run at a high speed, the possibilities of accidents are there. To face such situations we have established a separate emergency service unit. We have a paramedical unit for the Expressway and, the Police, the Special Task Force are handling this. The Fire Fight unit is also there to face emergencies which is also under the STF", he added.

The RDA Chairman assured that maximum safety measures are in place as it has been constructed according to internationally accepted standards.

"This Expressway has been constructed keeping to international standards, based on British system and we have constructed the expressway accordingly the RDA Chairman added.

"The first challenge we had was that we had to construct the first expressway in Sri Lanka under this project and this had to be constructed as an access control road. Therefore, in some areas the road had to be constructed few meters above the land level. In some sections the construction was done on the ground level itself. Therefore, we had to facilitate other roads that cut across this road by constructing overhead bridges", he added.

"The greatest challenge for us was the acquisition of land since this road was constructed in a purely new terrain. Therefore, we had to acquire lands required for this entire project quickly. We had to acquire 10,000 land blocks for this project and to provide alternative lands and houses for the displaced and also to construct houses for people whose houses were damaged due to the project.

That became a social issue in the country and we had to face lots of problems", he explained.

Another situation the RDA had to face was the situation when blasting rocks.

"The environmental problems created from that were unexpected ones. Due to damages to properties, there were many protests. Looking into their grievances and solving their problems became yet another project within the main project. That was totally an 'unexpected' project and we had to go before courts. We had to suspend the construction work of the expressway for a one year period due to court cases", he added.

"The other challenge we had to face was the construction of the road in marshy lands. There are instances we had to evolve new engineering mechanisms for the first time in Sri Lanka.

We have not used that type of technology in any part of Sri Lanka earlier. Our Engineers and contractors were also able to get new experience out of this", he added.

"We faced all those challenges effectively and that is why we were able to open this road as scheduled. There were delays in the construction work due to these challenges but were able to overcome all those challenges when we were completing the project", Pemasiri added.

He also said that measures were also being taken to reduce traffic congestion along High Level road with the implementation of the road widening from Kottawa to Nugegoda.

"There is huge congestion on High Level road from Nugegoda to Kottawa. Therefore, we decided to improve the section from Kottawa interchange of the expressway to Nugegoda flyover on the High Level road as a four lane road.

That process is going on now. We were expecting to complete that work also in parallel with to the opening of the Expressway barring a stretch in Pannipitiya. Once completed the congestion on the High Level road will ease to a certain extent", he added.

Apart from that to facilitate the vehicular traffic the RDA is also improving the Pannipitiya - Thalawathugoda Road making it into a four lane road. That work is in progress and the RDA is expecting to complete the work very soon to ease the flow of traffic with the opening of the new expressway.

RDA Chairman also said that the collection of toll is for the maintenance of the Expressway.

"Actually we are charging fees to maintain this road. Since we drive very fast on this road, we have to maintain it in top condition.

To do that we have to brush the road, wash it and then maintain the surface for the users to travel comfortably. Such things are not done for ordinary roads. We have to overlay the surface after 10-15 years.

These are expensive processes. That is why, we have to depend on the toll collection to fulfil those tasks but not to earn a profit", he added.

- Ranil