The Sri Lankan government has completed a pre-feasibility study on inland water transport with support from the Dutch government, amid plans to start work on the Megapolis project. While the projects will be on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis, they will also be used for tourism during non-peak hours.

Although Colombo has many north-south links, there are very few east-west links available, which in turn gives commuters very limited options. The canals are expected to help commuters who disembark at Fort quickly shuttle through the east Beira Lake to Union Place.

A new Light Rail System (LRS) is also planned for the Megapolis region covering Colombo and its suburbs with the Japanese providing a US$ 1.25 billion soft loan to fund it, based on the results of a feasibility study.

The proposed LRS project, which will be carried out via PPPs, will initially consist of two lines of 25 kilometers connecting Colombo with Malabe and will have a capacity of 30,000 passengers an hour in each direction as opposed to one and a half hours by road today.

It has been forecasted that the number of passengers in the main transport corridors would rise from 1.9 million to 4.5 million by 2035.