Two sections of an international school are causing massive traffic
jams and bottlenecks against the smooth traffic flow at Kohuwela, a key
suburb of Colombo, municipal and police officials say. This led to
Dehiwela-Mount Lavinia Deputy Mayor Kesaralal Gunasekera, spending three
continuous days – Tuesday to Thursday – this week observing the flow of
traffic from 7.15 a.m. to 8.15 a.m.
“The police informed me that the kindergarten section with 900 children of this international school was causing congestion at Kohuwela,” he told the Sunday Times as he observed the traffic flow (for one hour) from the 4th floor, rooftop of a building at the Kohuwela junction.
The council has called a special meeting of the parties concerned — police and school representatives — tomorrow to discuss possible solutions. “We are considering asking the school to open at 7 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. or even run a shuttle service instead of vehicles crowding at the entrance,” he said, adding that the congestion is causing a lot of inconvenience to bus travellers and other users of the road.
The senior section of the school with 4,000 students located at the end of Pietersz Place, which starts opposite the kindergarten section next to the Kohuwela Police Station, is also responsible for a build-up of traffic at the same junction.
The Deputy Mayor personally observed the congestion as a long line of vehicles gathered alongside the police station to drop the children at the kindergarten section. Just before Mr. Gunasekera arrived on his inspection tour, a long line of vehicles were turning into Pietersz Place to drop children at the main school, causing another bottleneck there.
Kohuwela is a central point for thousands of travellers from the direction of Piliyandala, Dehiwela, Colombo or Nawala to take bus connections to their workplace or study institutions. A flyover at the four-lane junction had been planned earlier in a bid to ease the congestion but the proposal fell through due to financial reasons.
Residents in and around Kohuwela have been complaining for many years over the growing number of tutories adding to the international schools which are a source of inconvenience and blamed municipal authorities for ad-hoc approval of these establishments.
“There is no method in the madness in the way approvals are given to schools and other tutories without due consideration to residents and others,” one resident said adding that such institutions need to be re-located.
More than half a million students are said to congregate in the Kohuwela-Nugegoda area every weekend for classes and other courses, the largest gathering of students in any Sri Lankan town.The congestion is expected to worsen when full-scale work on the expansion of the Pamankada-Kesbewa Road gets underway in coming months, during which a third of the road would be under construction.
The traffic flows turn into a snarl as Mr. Gunasekera found out during a test run. Starting off from Pepiliyana, it took him 43 minutes to reach the 2-km stretch to Kohuwela by car (7.15 a.m. to 7.58 a.m.) for a distance that should take less than 10 minutes. “At this rate it would take a motorist at least 2.5 hours to get to his office in Colombo Fort,” he noted.
