Police began strictly enforcing Colombo’s bus priority lane regulation on Tuesday, the same day Lanka Metro Transit put its new fleet onto five additional routes.
The rule is enforced by the Police Traffic Control and Road Safety Division. Manoj Ranagala of that division said the seven designated bus priority lanes in the Western Province operate from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., the Daily Mirror reported. During those hours other vehicles may neither drive in the lanes nor park in them.
Hiru News adds an operational detail the Daily Mirror omits: the reserved lane is one of three lanes on the road, and it switches sides by time of day — reserved in one direction during the morning window and in the opposite direction during the evening one. That is consistent with a scheme aimed at the inbound commute in the morning and the outbound one in the evening.
When other vehicles may use the lane
Ranagala listed four exemptions. A vehicle may enter a priority lane only to avoid an emergency or an accident, to get past severe congestion, or to make a turn where doing so is necessary. Police will run checks and take legal action against violators.
He also said the lanes are not reserved for Metro buses alone — any passenger transport bus may use them, which places the private operators on these corridors on the same footing as the state-backed service.
Three different fleet figures
The three outlets do not agree on how many buses entered service on Tuesday.
| Outlet | Filed | Buses |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Mirror | Sept 27 | 104 |
| NewsFirst | Sept 29, 7:56 a.m. | 111 |
| Hiru News | Sept 29 | 114 |
104 is the better-supported figure. It is the number the operator and the Transport Ministry have used consistently since the fleet arrived in July, and it is what both the Daily Mirror and Monday’s launch coverage carried. The 111 and 114 figures appear only in Tuesday morning filings and neither outlet explains the change. LankaNewz has not been able to confirm that any buses were added to the fleet.
NewsFirst quotes the Lanka Metro Transit chairman saying the service will be extended to regions outside Colombo from next year, repeating what he said on Monday. The five new routes run in addition to the two already in service, taking the network to seven.
Two unresolved details
The outlets also split on Ranagala’s rank — the Daily Mirror calls him an ASP, Hiru a Senior Superintendent and the division’s Director — and on the chairman’s initials, rendered as S.M.U.P. Thilakaratne, S.M.P. Thilakaratne and U.P. Thilakarathne across the three filings.
Neither the fares nor the timetables for the seven routes have been published, the same gap flagged when the route maps appeared on September 17.
