Southern Expressway Opens for Traffic

E01 brings Colombo closer to Galle

For motorists in heavy traffic, they say happiness is six green lights in a row. Now try 111 kilometres in an hour and 20 minutes – on a smooth dual carriageway that’s both scenic and seamless – for a drive that once took up to three hours along the westerly seaside route…

That would be heaven, wouldn’t it?

Of course, ‘heaven’ had to wait… and a long hiatus it was, between the initial proposal by the Road Development Authority (RDA) and Ministry of Highways as far back as the late 1980s, and completion of the first leg of the Southern Expressway Project (SEP) on 27 November 2011.

In the interim, an environmental impact assessment study was carried out by the University of Moratuwa in 1996, which was submitted to the government in early 1997. And construction began only in 2003.

Today, over 25 years later, the SEP spans twice the length (222 km) of the original leg (Colombo-Galle) from Kottawa’s Makumbura Interchange all the way to the southern port city of Hambantota, which section was declared open in February 2020.

It includes a highway traffic management system that covers the entire length of the expressway (designated ‘E01’) including the Outer Circular Expressway that rings the commercial and state capitals, and their respective boroughs and suburbs.

At the time that the first instalment of the E01 was completed, the poverty rate in the Southern Province had been an estimated 33 percent for over 10 years.

When the SEP brought Galle closer to Colombo by eliminating a two hour drive on the customarily used A2 (the erstwhile seaside route along the western coast) GDP growth in the Southern Province rose to five percent, five years after the project’s completion (in the absence of which, it was projected to remain at 2.8%).

Funded in part by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), which underwrote a 65 kilometre stretch between the Kurundugaha­hetekma and Kokmaduwa Interchanges, it was the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that provided funds for a third of the initial section (around 33 km between Kurundugahahetekma and Pinnaduwa) that opened up the south – including for business as much as hotels, as well as the Galle International Cricket Stadium.

When the SEP brought Galle closer to Colombo by eliminating a two hour drive on the customarily used A2 … GDP growth in the Southern Province rose to five percent