More Vehicles on Colombo’s Road Erode Citizens’ Rights
Photo courtesy of Motion Array
Within months of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake lifting the import ban on private vehicles, Colombo’s streets have morphed into a glitzy display the latest automobile concoctions. Petite Suzukis jostle past glamorous BMWs while spaceship-esque BYDs make their debut on the roads. Salespersons celebrate the surge in demand, consumers revel their new commuting machines and the government accelerates road construction to keep pace. Yet, beneath this automotive spectacle lurks a more insidious transformation: Colombo’s mutation into a city prioritizing the movement of private vehicles at the expense of its residents. Right in front of our eyes, Colombo’s car-dependent urban mobility policy is eroding the rights of its over 3.7 million people.
Right to Freedom of Movement
Despite Colombo’s automobile façade, 61 percent of daily trips in the region are made by public or non-motorized modes of transportation while just 11 percent are taken in private vehicles. Nevertheless, nearly 77 percent of the Transportation Ministry’s 488 billion rupee budget allocation is to the construction and maintenance of roads designed principally for private automobiles. While some may argue that these roads serve as the backbone of Colombo’s bus and pedestrian network, they lack the dedicated infrastructure such as separated bus lanes and raised crosswalks that would make them genuinely multimodal city streets.
Colombo’s prioritization of financially elite car owning minority in its mobility policy has left the working class majority running across dangerous roads, riding decrepit public transit or signing risky motorbike agreements to fulfill their transportation needs. From a human rights perspective, this violates individuals’ freedom of movement enshrined under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the constitution. Cars obstruct the right to move freely without obstruction and subvert the state’s obligation to facilitate citizens’ mobility. This has resulted in a spiraling cycle of automobile dependency, reducing the viability of alternative modes of transport and infringing on freedom of movement for the most vulnerable communities.
This exclusionary transportation policy has also disproportionally eroded the mobility and education rights for Colombo’s youth. According to the Ministry of Transport, the average trip length of GCE O’Level/A’Level and university students is 6.8 and 17.6 kilometers, respectively. As students are either too young or too broke to drive private vehicles, underfunded public transportation becomes the only viable option. Burnt out and sleepy, students are forced into long and precarious bus journeys to and from campus, jeopardizing their academic performance. Numerous studies have highlighted that longer school commute times are connected to decreased cognition skills and higher rates of absenteeism. In addition, ever-widening roads make it difficult for the youth to move and play within public spaces; the sight of children playing cricket is now a scant site on Colombo’s congested roads. This lack of accessible public space stunts youths’ physical, mental and social development, key components of their holistic right to education.
Finally, car-dependent development pushes Colombo’s disabled community to the sidelines. Sri Lanka has a disabled population of 1.6 million with about 997,000 with seeing disabilities and 734,000 with mobility impediments (not mutually exclusive). Caught at the intersection of disability and poverty, Colombo’s disabled are forced to navigate Colombo’s uneven sidewalks (all to frequently occupied by parked vehicles) and inaccessible public transportation simply to live their lives. While the government’s decision to import 100 low floor buses is a positive step, more investments into walking infrastructure and public transportation are needed to realize the mobility rights of this marginalized community.
Right to Healthy Environment
Colombo is burning. Within the last 25 years, Colombo has exclusively experienced higher annual temperatures than the historical norm. Although global climate change is partially responsible, a lot can be attributed to the exponential development of car-centric infrastructure and the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. A UHI is when an urban area becomes markedly warmer than its surrounding rural regions due to human infrastructure and waste heat production. Paved roads and parking lots not only contribute directly to UHIs by retaining heat but they also indirectly encourage urban sprawl and the usage of waste heat emitting cars. Sri Lankan and Japanese researchers found that in 1997 the Colombo Metropolitan Area’s (CMA) Land Surface Temperature (LST), the skin temperature of the ground, was mostly comprised of areas with LST’s less than 25’C. However, by 2017, the Area was mostly comprised of areas with LST’s exceeding 29’C with most of central Colombo being over 31’C.
The areas that experienced the largest jumps in LST are the closest to major roads. Increases in surface temperatures can cause human health hazards like heat stress, exacerbating health conditions including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Interestingly, Colombo’s car dependency also influences the incidence of dengue as lower Diurnal Temperature Variation (DTR) – the difference in temperature between (typically) daytime high and nighttime low temperatures – can lead to mosquitos having longer lifespans and higher susceptibility to dengue infection. As road surfaces like asphalt have high thermal capacities, they trap heat during the day and warm the air at night, reducing an area’s DTR. A study examining the Colombo district between 2005 and 2014 supported that lower DTRs were positively correlated with dengue transmission. Is it any wonder why Colombo is evolving into a hot, disease-ridden metropolis?
Anyone who has had the displeasure of walking during rush hour has also experienced Colombo’s declining air quality. In February 2025, the city experienced good air quality’(<50 AQI) only 0.17 percent of the time. Alarmingly, the level of PM10, air particles linked to premature deaths and cancer, has surpassed the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended limit by 285 percent. Autopsies conducted by the University of Colombo revealed that the Sri Lankan urban dwellers’ corpses had elevated levels of Cadmium, a highly toxic metal released by automotive parts. Although Colombo urbanites love to blame India’s for its role in transboundary air pollution into the area, research has pointed to the primary contributor to the city’s atmospheric degradation being domestic vehicular emissions. Studies from around the world have also observed that congestion is one of the largest contributors to urban air pollution. Toxic air strangles our right to a healthy environment and compromises our right to life.
Another often overlooked consequence of Colombo’s car-centric development is its impact on local ecosystems and the climate. After the civil war ended in 2009, Colombo’s urban growth exploded. Spurred by massive investments in Colombo’s road infrastructure by the central government and increased access to private vehicle transportation, settlements around arterial roads such as Malabe and Wattala transitioned from tiny exurbs into sprawling satellite cities. This urban sprawl has resulted in habitat fragmentation – the segmentation of continuous habitat – threatening the long term survival of Colombo’s wetlands, biodiversity hotspots that offer crucial flood protection. The problem is not directly that of urbanization, in fact the the core cities of the CMA have experienced gradual population decline over the years, but rather of largely low density urban growth fueled by the perceived ease of long distance commuting in private vehicles by Sri Lankans. Additionally, car-centric development harms our fight against climate change. The transportation sector is the by far largest C02 emitter in the country, threatening 2050 goal of net-zero emissions. Without the core elements of the natural environment, we put not only our health jeopardy but the rights of the future generations to realize their right to a healthy environment.
Cultural Rights and Right to the City
From Independence Square to Viharamadevi Park, cars are eroding our cultural rights. The Right to Culture recognizes an individual right to “freely participate in the cultural life” of a community. As road development continues to expand, it divides communities, destroys green space and dissects public space. This pulverizes a community’s cultural homogeneity and the very third spaces – the places where people go to connect with others in their community – that facilitate these interactions. As Colombo’s green and third spaces decline precipitously, what remains is insular, exclusive, car-dependent third spaces like malls precipitating an inauthentic culture of consumerism.
Furthermore, automobile-centric development impedes residents’ right to the city. Although an ongoing debate, the Right to the City generally describes the human right for a city’s inhabitants to shape their lives and the urban environment they occupy, reclaiming it from market-driven forces. Because most of Colombo’s new road infrastructure is centered around the minority of automobile drivers, it inherently shuns the voices of the carless majority, disregarding their right to shape their city. Moreover, automobile infrastructure are notoriously inflexible assets – their sole purpose is to serve the automobiles – making it near impossible for residents to craft their surroundings. Wouldn’t a Colombo that embraces its residents’ creativity where makeshift art galleries and cricket pitches sprout spontaneously in forgotten dull streets be a far more vibrant, livable city? Finally, car-centric infrastructure blocks a city’s residents from shaping their personal and social lives. People cannot go for a morning walk or visit a neighbor without risking their lives crossing expansive roads.
Ways Forward
Without a fundamental transformation in the way we think about urban transportation, Colombo will become a city where our rights to movement, a healthy environment and a cultural life will be rundown by cars. A major reprioritization of transportation funds towards walking, biking and public transportation infrastructure is needed to resurrect our decaying city. Not only do we as city dwellers need to change the way we envision the city but the government must put in difficult work to engage with us about our urban futures.
