Special bus and train services are running throughout Saturday to ferry passengers back to Colombo at the tail end of the Sinhala and Tamil New Year holidays, the National Transport Commission (NTC) and the Department of Railways said.
NTC Director General Nilan Miranda said additional buses have been allocated on expressway routes in particular, with heavy return traffic expected across the weekend and into Monday. Express services are operating from Monaragala, Embilipitiya, Badulla, Bandarawela and Nuwara Eliya to Colombo.
The Department of Railways has deployed several extra train runs, with special services arriving in the capital from Anuradhapura, Kankesanthurai, Matara and Beliatta.
The coordinated push follows a Sri Lanka Transport Board operation that ran 1,490 buses through the Avurudu travel window and a record Rs. 600 million in SLTB return-travel revenue during the festive period. A seat-reservation system for long-distance buses is also in force.
Public and private sector offices resume on Monday, April 21, with most private sector employees working from home on April 20 and 21 under a government directive issued earlier in the month to manage fuel demand.
