Since STAR LRT (Light Rail Transit) was first introduced in the end of 1996, Malaysia hasn’t undergone any major breakthrough and development in public transportation apart from some expansions and extensions in Kuala Lumpur. Few more railway transit lines were built but on the average ridership of each line has never hit more than half its capacity (1),which is sad in two ways: first being these public funded projects by the government have never been optimised to full usage, second reason being the failure of these alternative transportation in easing the worsening traffic congestion on the roads.
All these while we have been talking about reducing the excise tax for cars, but are we addressing the real issues here in Malaysia? As long as no effort is done on public transportation, no matter how cheap the cars are, the cities will still be congested and the relative time to get to your destination will only get longer than before.
In only two years from 2008 to 2010, car ownership in Malaysia rose close to 10% from 334 cars per 1000 capita to 361 cars per 1000 capita (2). Ranked 2nd highest in Southeast Asia only after Brunei, and 7th highest among all Asian countries, Malaysia had surpassed 22 million units of registered vehicles on the roads (bear in mind that the total population in Malaysia is 26.9 million) by 2012 and the figures will only continue to rise unless drastic measurements are taken.
While railways and bus transit are concentrated in big cities, we should not ignore citizens living in the suburban areas and deny improvements of public transportation in these areas. The public transport network from city to suburban areas as well as rural areas is bad and unreliable. To make things worse, dishonest taxi drivers and illegal touts take advantage of passengers in rural areas where laws are rarely enforced. All these contribute to a “bad habit” of Malaysians to own cars instead of taking the public transport.
Another major reason behind why Malaysians still prefer to drive is the poor planning for the implementation of public transport. Note that many of the commute stations are located in less populated area, for instance Abdullah Hukum station where you can hardly see more than a dozen of passengers apart from peak hours. The planning of such public transport system must be targeted and focused at the right locations, with the consideration of connectivity and user-friendly facilities. Sometimes you will see neither bus station connectivity nor proper sheltered footbridges to the stations, which further hinders pedestrians from accessing these stations.
We can no longer ignore the severity of this issue and resume with the conventional measures and methods to ease the traffic on the road by only expanding the public transportation network. To make an impact, radical approaches must be considered.
First of all, a well planned transport system needs to be executed on top of the current available system. One thing which would encourage the public to take public transport would be a better integrated public transport system. It was a late but good effort nonetheless that Kelana LRT line and Ampang LRT line finally shared the same ticketing system in 2011. Apart from that, with the limitation of railway transit of reaching any specific destinations, better and more reliable bus transit integration will ensure people get to their destination easily.
Another option is the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). Successful cases have been seen globally in various metropolitan cities such as Bogota, Mexico City and Shanghai, where the positive impact is not only in improving the traffic congestion, but the air pollution index has significantly reduced alongside with reduction in traffic accidents. Such alternative should be given serious consideration as to really improve on the current transport system.
Other more radical approaches that could be considered would include giving incentives for people to use public transportation. The integration of certain amount of public transport rebate into MyKad will certainly encourage such usage. Government should consider public transport usage schemes where the more a person uses the public transport, the lower the fare will be. Such incentive should be explored as a creative solution to encourage the usage of public transportation.
Several other alternatives would be car pool incentive where people sharing cars will be rewarded. Cars older than 20 years should be considered to be disposed or being imposed with heavier road tax for environment-friendly and hazard reduction purposes. “Park n’ Ride” option is seen in several but not most of the LRT stations and often the parking facilities are very limited and more of such facilities should be built.
As a summary, the public transport system in our country needs to be fixed. The government should really start considering long term and creative solutions in resolving public transportation issues. However, it is highly dependent on the political willingness of the government to exercise the legal authority to control the outcomes. Nonetheless, the ability to develop a well-planned and acceptable transition plan must be reinforced in-time in order to achieve the standards of an advanced nation. A well-planned public transport system will not only ease traffic congestion, but serves as catalyst to the chain reaction which will bring endless benefits to Malaysia.
Ng Boon Ming
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(1) Oh, Errol (16 June 2000). "Red flags". Malaysian Business.
(2) World Bank. International Road Federation, World Road Statistics and data files. 2010.
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