We mapped the crowded parts of Colombo where almost nobody can walk to a Metro Bus stop, and looked at why the lines miss them.
Our first piece found that one person in five who lives along the Colombo Metro Bus lines can walk to a stop in ten minutes. This piece is about the other four, and about the crowded neighbourhoods the buses pass by.
The slides below build up the picture one layer at a time.
In short
The Metro Bus misses the most crowded part of the city it was built for. About 200,000 people in Colombo North live a few kilometres from Fort, and almost none of them can walk to a stop.
This is not a matter of a few extra minutes. Fewer than one in ten people in the seven areas lives even inside an 800-metre circle around a stop. The lines follow the main roads into the centre, and the centre gets several lines on the same roads while the crowded north has no stop within walking distance.
We think any next decision about the Metro Bus should start from these neighbourhoods and the people who live in them, rather than from the roads that already have a bus.