I booked the Expo Rail semi-luxury train online and took it to Kandy. We spent about five hours there and came straight back. It’s pretty good, with a few bumps along the way. On the whole, it’s a nearly ideal way to take a day-trip to the city.

I took the Southern Expressway Bus (SEX Bus if you will) today and it was A) instantly available and B) largely unoccupied. This is good because it’s good for me, but bad because the thing used to be packed. I honestly think part of it is because the fare was raised Rs. 70 due to recent gas hikes.

Sri Lanka’s private buses are on strike against an increase in fuel prices. This is a major problem. Contrary to popular belief, what ignites protests more than democracy or human rights is petrol and food prices, as in Burma, Tunisia, et cetera. Since petrol went up by Rs. 12 per litre and diesel by Rs. 31, there’s been a lot of complaints, with the breakdown of public/private transport being the most obvious and loud.

I spoke to a trishaw driver about expenses. He said a new trishaw cost about Rs. 389,000, and at the rate he goes he has to upgrade every few years. He said a meter costs about Rs. 9,000-11,000, petrol costs about Rs. 2,000 a day and I guess that’s about it. He said he did less trips before the meter (say about 10 a day) but he can’t get a hires without a meter these days. He said he does about 20 fares a day. He seems to be doing OK.

In predicting the future (which I kinda suck at, but you don’t know that yet), it helps to think of stupid problems. What are problems so stupid that someone, somewhere must think of a solution to them? For example, transport. A Swedish study found that “couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce.” This is a stupid problem. What’s to be done about it?

Colombo has one modern bus, but I saw like ten parked opposite Galle Face Green. I hope they’re coming soon. Opposite GFG is like an unofficial parking lot. You used to see military vehicles, then steamrollers, now buses. Rows upon rows. You can’t quite see from this photo, but there are at least 10 buses parked here. These are the new Volvos These are Micros, and I think there is one Volvo now running on the Galle Road. You have about as much chance of catching it as catching a unicorn. Hopefully this lot should improve the odds.

This morning, four people were killed (including two children) when a van caught fire. The problem internationally is worse, as Matt Yglesias says “There’s a social convention in the United States that we don’t talk about those ninety daily deaths as a serious problem, even though obviously if we had nine people getting killed by terrorists every month there’d be a perpetual state of freaking out.”

Trishaws can communicate great wisdom, though they often drive like asses. Trishaw drivers express a range of sentiments via stickers and arts, ranging from the power of mothers love to today’s insight “Art Is Long, Life Is Short”. Quite true.

I’ve been taking the bus a lot lately, which is OK, but also silly. There’s a lot of obvious competitive forces that the bus operators are just ignoring. Bus operators compete on speed, racing across routes. Since they stop every kilometer, however, this doesn’t make the ride significantly shorter, just more dangerous. What they don’t compete on is quality, and I’m thinking they should.

The Southern Expressway bus is pretty great, but there’s not enough of them. It gets you down south in 90 minutes, but I had to wait three hours in Colombo until one was available. They are scheduled every hour, but in reality it seems more like every 90 minutes. I came at three and the closest bus was at six. So there you go. Even at Rs. 400, it’s still in high demand.