Evaluating "Gamisariya" rural bus service programme

Abstract

“Public Passenger Transport (PPT) is very often associated with subsidies in almost all countries in the world”. When consider Sri Lanka, as a developing country, this statement is true with the PPT for Rural communities. Rural Passenger Services are making loss due to different reasons. As a result of this fact private bus owners are reluctant to operate bus services in uneconomic rural routes. But as an agricultural base country, over 70% of Sri Lanka’s population lives in rural areas. Therefore rural passenger transport services are very important for the commercial, industrial, social and educational activities in rural communities and such services can provide several benefits to the rural societies. The National Transport Commission (NTC) is implementing the project called “Gamisariya” to subsidize the identified uneconomic rural routes. Under this project transport services are provided for more than 1014 rural villages and for more than 77000 rural passengers. The objective of the study was “To find out social & economical benefits created by “Gamisariya” project to the rural communities and to find out whether operators get sufficient subsidy amount to provide a reliable service to the villages.” To achieve the objective following methods were used to collect data;  Interview with bus passengers/villagers and operators in selected routes  Interview with village committees who investigate the service.  Discussion with the officers in NTC who are involving with Gamisariya Project. According to the results of analysis, the Gamisariya Rural Bus service (GRBS) Programme has increased the number of social and economical trips of the rural people. Further, the villagers are gaining more income for their production due to less transportation cost and higher volume of production. The project has higher economic benefit level to the society and road development and increasing land value are some indirect benefits that have been taken place due to the project. Although several advantages are gained through this project the operators are not provided subsidies on time and some operators are not provided enough subsidy amounts to maintain their services. G.R.B.S has a significant impact on school trips of the children in selected villages and employment trips of the people. Further, to provide more useful service the time table of GRBS is needed to be coordinated with the timetables of buses, trains which have a grater demand from the passengers.