The term ‘multi-modal’ refers to the use of several modes. A multimodal hub is a place which provides ground facilities for multimodal transportation. Battaramulla is a town located in the Western province, Colombo district under Kaduwela Municipal council which is 9.2 kilometres away from the commercial city centre of Colombo Fort. It is a junction connecting three major towns namely Rajagiriya, Kottawa, and Kaduwela. Currently, even though there are eight major bus routes passing through Battaramulla there are none which originate from or terminate at Battaramulla. This is because Sri Jayawardanepura Kotte which is also the administrative capital of Sri Lanka does not have a bus terminal. Besides the Parliament, there are over 20 ministries located in this area providing employment to over 11,000 people. High trip-attractors such as the Department of Immigration and Emigration and the National Identity Card office are also located in Battaramulla. This area therefore attracts a large number of vehicles and passengers daily, resulting in average speed on main roads falling well below 20 kmph. As buses load and unload a large number of passengers along the roadside, this too contributes to traffic congestion. Growing passenger demand demonstrates that Battaramulla requires a better public transport network to provide better facilities and to attract more passengers to public transport. Hence, this study identifies the current demand and supply for Battaramulla and analyses them in order to propose potential bus service improvements. In addition, it focuses on selecting a suitable location among several candidate locations using multi-criteria analysis to develop the proposed multimodal hub which is also to connect to the proposed rapid transit system in the future.

Jayawardane, W., & Kumarage, A.S. (2017). Developing a multimodal transport hub and bus service improvements for Battaramulla [Extended Abstract]. In T.L. Gunaruwan (Ed.), Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Research for Transport and Logistics Industry 2017 (pp. 155-159). Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics. https://slstl.lk/r4tli-2017/