“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.” — Gustavo Petro (a Colombian economist turned politician, now the Mayor of Bogota)
We all know cars. Still, as I needed a more specific definition, I looked to Wikipedia. A car or automobile, it says, is a wheeled, self-powered motor vehicle used for transportation. Most definitions of the term, it further adds, specify that cars are designed to run primarily on roads, to have seating for one to eight people, to typically have four wheels and to be constructed principally for the transport of people rather than goods.
In Sri Lanka, a car is something different. It is not just what Wikipedia says it is. For many, it is more a status symbol than a mode of transport. Unfortunately, this perceived image of a car, different from the real one, is the origin of some of the most serious socio-economic problems we currently face.
Some statistics. Daily Mirror on October 11, 2015, presented the results of a survey on vehicles entering Colombo. The vast majority to do so on an average day, it says, are privatized motor vehicles. Including three wheelers and motorbikes, they constitute 87% of the total. This is followed by goods vehicles that make roughly 7%. Machines of mass transport including school vans and buses count only a little more than 6%. What shocks us is the next set of numbers. That last 6% accounts for 52% of passenger traffic to the Colombo municipal area, while privatized motor vehicles bring a bit more than 800,000, or 44%. A public vehicle, on average, brings 33.7 passengers to Colombo, while a private vehicle averages only 1.87 passengers.
Bottom line: when you curse the morning traffic, remember it is not because the roads are not wider; we all fill the limited road space with our empty vehicles. If half of us use public transport instead, there wouldn’t be any traffic issues. But it’s not going happen like that. Let’s see what we can do about it. Will our society ever change its perception about private vehicle ownership? This is a question for behavioral economists. In responding, we should look for the origins of this thinking. Even prior to the introduction of motor vehicles, the rich and powerful (less than 1% of the population) owned the monopoly over modes of transport. South Asian aristocracy used chariots and palanquins. Following the industrial revolution, they were replaced by vehicles, which continued to be indications of social status. After a century, we still think they are. For a recently successful entrepreneur or a young professional, an important moment is the purchasing of their first vehicle. Then upgrading it at different stages of life is a must – something parallel to the climbing of the social ladder.
[pullquote]This leaves only one option. Improve public transportation. Also, there is no rule that says we should opt for a single solution. Why not use different solutions for different corridors?[/pullquote]
Has issuing ‘car permits’ changed this mentality? Hardly. The car permit was only a smart move by the government to corrupt public officials who had shared this very thinking. Historically, the duty-free permit to import a vehicle was introduced as an incentive for professionals like doctors, engineers and academics with recognized postgraduate qualifications, to retain them in the country. One objective was to let them bring their used vehicle here duty-free. Unfortunately, once such a hole is made, it widens. First, the definition of ‘professionals’ was expanded to include almost everybody working in the public sector. Then, politicians found it a great way of rewarding themselves and their supporters at the local level. Later, so many other categories like journalists and religious leaders have been brought in. They all received this benefit, while the rest of the country sometimes paid as much as 200% in taxes and levies to buy a new vehicle. In one way, it is not fair; on the other, it creates an unwanted social division. So the government is correct in its attempts to control this. While many professionals may see it as a ‘privilege lost’, it is a necessary step. If public sector professionals are paid poorly, let us increase their salaries. Corrupting them is not the answer.
Another perspective: More car owners means less chances of a car becoming a status symbol. So why not reduce tax so that more can import their own vehicles? That was exactly what we did in the first six months of 2015. The numbers went up drastically. Vehicle registrations hit a new high of nearly 62,000 in July 2015, with cars up 85%, three wheelers up 73% and motorcycles up 68%. Apart from creating traffic, such a trend contributes badly to the already significant Balance of Payments (BoP) gap. In 2014, 4.6% of our imports were vehicles (the highest in the consumable goods category), while fuel constituted 24% (NB: not all of this was for transportation). So ‘Vehicles-forall’, though it sounds good, is not exactly a practical solution. Like many Singaporeans, some Sri Lankans too should face reality.
This leaves only one option. Improve public transportation. Also, there is no rule that says we should opt for a single solution. Why not use different solutions for different corridors?
Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) can be one option. Its obvious disadvantage is the high cost. The minimum ticket price, to cover the investment and support operations, will not be less than Rs150. MRT is not typically recommended for cities with less than a population of 5 million too. Still, if we move the city boundaries of Colombo a little beyond its municipal limits from Negombo to the North, Gampaha, Kaduwela and Padduka to the East, and Panarura to the South, we now come close. Implementation may not be a smooth process too, given the fact that MRT projects in almost all Indian cities were delayed. The question is whether we start now and complete maybe 5-10 years later, when it is really necessary, or continue cursing the traffic.
Another option is Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). It fully dedicates the right of way (busway) to buses to avoid traffic congestion. The first BRT system was the Rede Integrada de Transporte (Integrated Transportation Network) in Curitiba, Brazil, in 1974. This inspired similar systems in Brazil and around the world. At end-2014, 186 cities all over the world had BRT systems, accounting for 4,757 km of BRT lanes. More relevant for us could be the one in Ahmedabad, India. It is 87km long and carries 180,000 passengers daily. Like MRT projects in India, this is hardly free from problems. Buses typically get delayed as other private vehicles enter the busway. It may not be a perfect solution, but something we can at least consider. It appears that this is the only way out of petrol politics. Develop the public transport system and make private transport purposely costly, hoping that some will prefer using the former. If they are better, there is no reason why they will not.