Kurunegala commits to improving mobility

The municipality of Kurunegala, Sri Lanka, has engaged in a process to transform and modernise its urban mobility system. Despite being a relatively small town for Sri Lanka, with its 120 000 inhabitants Kurunegala is the Capital city of both the North Western Province and the Kurunegala District. According to the plan elaborated in 2018 by the Ministry of Megapolis and Western Development, Kurunegala should become one of the main urban centre – even a “metro region” – of the East‑West Development Corridor that guides the spatial and economic development at the national scale of Sri Lanka. This city should meet an annual growth rate of 2.5%, the highest of the country. Consequently, Kurunegala will face many challenges regarding urban development, employment, and transportation.

Another characteristic of Kurunegala is that the city does not have any transport master plan and neither public mass transit system. The SUMP elaboration is paving the way for the city to have adequate tool to develop sustainable mobility.

Expected results

The elaboration of the SUMP was launched in April 2019. Through this SUMP elaboration, the municipality of Kurunegala has the following objectives:

• To increase and maintain public transport share to 60% and increase railway share to 10%
• Streamline public transport operations in Kurunegala to make it commuter friendly according to the desire and requirement.
• Integrate with Railway and other modes for better accessibility, connectivity and seamless transfer for first and last mile connectivity.
• To increase efficiency of public transport service delivery by using modern techniques
• To create modern facilities for commuter convenience
• Creation of infrastructure to meet the current and future needs
• Improve overall attractiveness of public transport so as to induce modal shift from use of private vehicles, at the same time ensuring that the Kurunegala city is not congested
• Well defined roles for supplementary modes for transfers.
• To decongest city centre gradually to meet expansion and demographic growth of the Kurunegala city in future.
• To reduce air and noise pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption to make Kurunegala a liveable city.

Support from MobiliseYourCity

The Municipal Council of Kurunegala will receive direct support from AFD who will hire a consortium of consultants to work directly with the municipality and local governmental agencies to assist on developing the SUMP.

Achieved results

• Inception report (September 2019)
• Diagnosis report (March 2020), with the organisation of:
  • Mobilise Days
  • Diagnosis workshop
  • Public Transport focus group
• Scenario elaboration and comparison report (1st Draft, May 2020/ Revised Draft, December 2020)