Note: Even in Colombo most places traffic chaos start with simple stupidity of the police taking over the lights. When lights are on or let the people go, traffic moves just fine.
In the ancient times Kandy city is built as a fortress with limited access. This doesn't help at all for the modern lifestyle. Many people now owns some sort of their own vehicle. Generally I guess in Sri Lanka, there are more vehicles than its road network can support.
In Kandy there aren't much traffic lights, too many lanes and the cops are being the dumbest, you can see the traffic hell in Kandy if you drive a vehicle. Naturally too much traffic start creating havocs in Kandy for the last decade. Parking is next to impossible in the city at any given time. This has been neglected nearly 10 years and finally last year the government made a decent multi story parking lot to overcome this within city parking problem.
This ended up as even more vehicles are entering the city now. Still roads are ignored at large. There is only three main access points to Kandy with narrow single lane roads which were built way back in 18th century. Namely Galagedara Kadugannawa and Kundasale passages. Where as the Galagedara one we live is being the most difficult. They are widening the road from Kurunegala side for years. It never finishes.
Forget all that but when you reach Katugastota, the bridge is one goddamn bottleneck for anybody who reach or leave the city thro this way.
Imagine the size of an access to Sri Lanka’s second largest city.
Last Friday I sat along in a bus for nearly two hours just to go home from Good-Shed Bus Stand to Nugawela (Just 8 Km). Idiot city cops at the bridge simply don't understand that all the vehicles enter the city has to leave fast so the town is less populated. Imagine the queue started from Mahiyawa Tunnel near Indra Traders and the traffic was stand still until we reached the bridge nearly one hour later. I think the queue itself was 1.5 Km long.
Taken some other time, this is nearly where the police guy was.
Gosh! To everybody's surprise we could see the goddamn cop in the middle of the bridge Katugastota side allowing whole long 4 minutes for the entering vehicles and only gives 2 mins for the leaving traffic. It was peak hour and people leaving the city after work than coming. Supposed to be a traffic police Hugh! These cops should be shot on the spot for this plain ignorance. I heard somebody is muttering why can't we run over this idiot in sarcastic manner. What this morons didn't see was the queue was endless from the city side we came and the entering one was mere eyes length. Still worse standing in the middle of the narrow bend he was blocking more traffic than helping.
I wonder why these cops are paid for just creating havocs in the road.
Simple solution to this is placing few traffic lights there and get rid of the cops. If the Kandy Municipal Counsel can't afford to build a better bridge they can fire these unnecessary police morons and even save few bucks.
At least President Premadasa's time they build this nice bridge in Gannoruwa so I can at least avoid this dilemma if I drive. 
Nice but very narrow Kadugannawa Old Passage, luckily here they built a diversion for sometime back.
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