Challenges in the present public transportation system in Kilinochchi

Abstract

Kilinochchi, a town in northern Sri Lanka, is a sparsely inhabited region with widely dispersed residential areas. At present, public transport in Kilinochchi mainly comprises of bus transit operated only along the main roads due to limited bus fleet and capacity. Due to spatial dispersion of residences, the present bus service is hardly accessible by the passengers and thus, a great majority accesses the existing bus transit via para-transit, private vehicles which are relatively expensive or by walking. This study investigates the possibility of introducing an alternative transport mechanism using a survey on present public transport passengers. The questionnaire survey was done on 516 bus passengers (41% of the total passengers) and the results exhibit poor accessibility of the present bus transit: more than 29% have direct access and 11% of the passengers have access with egress distances of 1.5 km or more and 19% pay Rs. 150 or above when using egress modes. A bus passenger volume survey done on the major corridor revealed that during morning peak hours, 37% buses operate at full capacity or over. The findings of the study, therefore, emphasizes a revisit of the present local bus transit in the context of rerouting and rescheduling. The study suggests to explore the possibility of introducing Demand Responsive Transportation (DRT) with flexible scheduling and routing to satisfy spatially and temporally scattered passenger demand.