Sri Lanka has allocated Rs. 80 billion to introduce electric trains, with infrastructure plans finalised and construction targeted to begin next year, Railway General Manager Ravindra Padmapriya has said.
Speaking to NewsFirst’s Dawase Vimasuma programme, Padmapriya said the country is launching a major initiative to develop electric railways as a modern suburban transport system, NewsFirst reported. The stated aim is a faster, more efficient and lower-emission network for daily commuters.
The timeline has moved
The figure is new; the schedule is not what was announced earlier this year.
In April, Deputy Minister of Transport Prasanna Gunasena said electric services on three Colombo suburban corridors were scheduled to begin by early 2027. Speaking again in June, he said the electrification phase would take three to four years once construction began.
Saturday’s account places the start of construction in 2027 — the year services were originally due to be running. On the deputy minister’s own three-to-four-year estimate, that puts electric trains on the network around 2030 or 2031.
Neither the Railway General Manager nor NewsFirst addressed the shift, and no official has publicly acknowledged a change to the target.
The corridors
Padmapriya said initial development focuses on commuter lines connecting Maradana to suburbs including Ragama and Panadura, alongside regional extensions.
NewsFirst rendered a third destination as “Malawatta”. Project documentation and earlier reporting consistently name Makumbura, the Kelani Valley line terminus, as the third corridor alongside the Main line to Ragama and the Coastal line to Panadura. LankaNewz has not been able to confirm which was said.
Scale of the number
Rs. 80 billion is a substantial commitment but a fraction of the sums attached to full network electrification, which has been discussed publicly at figures well above US$1 billion. NewsFirst did not say whether the Rs. 80 billion covers the entire programme or only the first phase of works, nor did it identify the funding source or a contractor.
Under the plan set out earlier, track on the targeted corridors is to be converted from broad gauge to standard gauge, with existing diesel services running in parallel during the transition. A separate account from Deputy Minister Ruwan Senarath on August 23 also placed the start of work next year, describing a service that would let passengers from Beliatta change at Panadura for the electric network.
No other verified newsroom LankaNewz tracks had carried the Rs. 80 billion figure at the time of filing.
