Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2018-01-16

Procuring of 50 Electric Buses for the Sri Lanka Transport Board to upgrade the urban public transport service

- Most of the people use their private vehicles for their day today transport needs due to the lack of comfortable, dependable and efficient public transport service and it contributes to a heavy traffic congestion on city roads and air pollution.

The Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) possesses 6,300 buses in running condition and out of which 2,467 are more than 10 years old. Since such buses are subject to frequent wayside breakdowns, it causes problems to provide the public with a more reliable and efficient bus service. Further, the total number of buses required for the Transport Board is 7,257 to operate in accordance with a time table. At present, the fleet of buses of the SLTB consists 100% of diesel buses, which is a contributory factor for air pollution.

Accordingly, the proposals made by Hon. Nimal Siripala de Silva, the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, to install an environment friendly Bus Rapid Transit System (BRT) within the city of Colombo, so that the elderly and the disabled passengers also can travel easily, and to purchase 50 electronic low floor air conditioned buses to the Sri Lanka Transport Board, was approved by the Cabinet.