The Ratmalana Metro Depot began operations on Monday as the fourth Metro Bus depot built in Sri Lanka, Hiru News reported.
The depot is intended to serve passengers travelling into Colombo and across the suburbs, with the operator promising what Hiru describes as a more reliable, comfortable and time-saving service.
What “fourth” means
The count matters more than the opening. The Metro Bus project’s first phase provides for exactly four depots — at Talangama, Kadawatha, Ekala and Ratmalana. Ratmalana being the fourth therefore marks the completion of that phase, not another step through it.
Our coverage has the first two on the record: the first yard was vested in the public at Talangama, Battaramulla on 4 September, and the Kadawatha depot opened three days later, on 7 September, when Transport Minister Bimal Rathnayake used the occasion to announce the service’s extension to Galle, Kandy and Jaffna and a fleet rising to 172 vehicles. That article noted at the time that neither outlet covering it would say when the remaining Ekala and Ratmalana depots were due.
Ratmalana’s position as fourth answers half of that question and implies the other half — that Ekala, in Ja-Ela, opened at some point in the fortnight between. No Sri Lankan newsroom filing on the Ekala opening has surfaced, and Hiru’s item does not mention it.
The depot has a name
Hiru’s text does not carry it, but the depot’s own signage does. The photograph filed with the story shows the building branded “MetroCoast” — the coastal-corridor identity for the Ratmalana yard, consistent with the pattern of naming each depot for the corridor it serves rather than numbering them.
The same photograph shows two red Metro buses badged FOTON, the Chinese manufacturer, parked under a covered maintenance canopy beside a glass-fronted office block, with staff in uniform on the apron.
Not reported
Hiru gives no fleet size for Ratmalana, no route list, no construction cost, no employment figure and no opening-ceremony details — not even who declared it open. It does not say how many of the 172 buses promised by year-end are now in service, whether the four completed depots trigger a second phase, or where a second phase would build. The Lanka Metro Transit operator is not named in the item at all.
No other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had reported the Ratmalana opening at the time of writing; the Daily Mirror and NewsFirst listings carried nothing on it.
