The Hon. Bimal Rathnayake - Minister of Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation and Leader of the House of Parliament
Minister Bimal Rathnayake said Colombo–Kankesanthurai services had been affected by post-Covid demand changes, line rehabilitation, rolling stock reallocations and crew shortages. He stated that the main constraint is the incomplete Maho–Anuradhapura signalling system, currently requiring token/tablet operations, and that work has begun to complete it so services such as Sri Devi and Uttara Devi can be restored or extended. He also said an Anuradhapura–Vavuniya shuttle is under consideration, Train No. 4021/4022 has been made daily from 9 June 2025 with weekend departures from Mt. Lavinia from 21 June, and a coastal substitute is operating because Yal Devi cannot be extended to Mt. Lavinia due to crew shortages.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Statement: Resumption of Colombo–Kankesanthurai train service, in response to the question raised by Hon. K. Kader Masthan on 2025.06.04 under Standing Order 27(2).
¶ 02 1) Train No. 4003/4004 (Sri Devi) previously extended from Anuradhapura to Kankesanthurai. It was suspended due to post-Covid low demand and line closures for rehabilitation; after rehabilitation and increased demand on the Talaimannar line, that train was allocated there. Departure times: Colombo Fort 15:45; Talaimannar 04:10.
¶ 03 The bottleneck is the incomplete signaling between Maho and Anuradhapura, limiting train throughput; currently operating on token/tablet system, which constrains safe simultaneous movements. Work has commenced to complete the signaling so the requested extensions can be accommodated.
¶ 04 2) Train No. 4017/4018 (Uttara Devi) was suspended during line rehabilitation. Its S13 power set was reassigned to the Batticaloa line following elephant-collision issues because S13 offers better driver forward visibility than older locomotives. Due to signaling constraints between Maho–Anuradhapura, this service cannot resume until works finish.
¶ 05 3) During the war, long-distance services terminated at Vavuniya; post-war, services run to KKS. Currently trains terminate at Vavuniya, so separate demand at Vavuniya is low. Nevertheless, we are considering an Anuradhapura–Vavuniya rail-bus style shuttle; no final decision yet.
¶ 06 4) Train No. 4021/4022 operates on weekends, long weekends and special days using one power set. Once the second set is rehabilitated, daily operation is possible. Cable vandalism around Mt. Lavinia/Ratmalana months ago also delayed restoration. Following the Hon. Member’s request, steps were taken to operate No. 4021/4022 daily from 2025.06.09, and from 2025.06.21 to run on weekends starting from Mt. Lavinia as requested.
¶ 07 5) Due to crew shortages (drivers and guards), Yal Devi cannot run from Colombo Fort to Mt. Lavinia; to ease commuter inconvenience, a coastal substitute operates.
¶ 08 Signaling upgrades are essential to resolve the remaining issues.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 19 June 2025 ·No. 1751430648025512 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/27464
Cite as: The Hon. Bimal Rathnayake - Minister of Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation and Leader of the House of Parliament. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 19 June 2025. No. 1751430648025512. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/27464