Community Board: Thinking Ahead of the Curve

For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in transportation, especially public transport. As soon as I was old enough to play outside, I was watching the freight trains and commuter trains passing near my home. I also have memories of taking the subway train across the city of Toronto every week for many years. Over the past six years, I have studied how public transport services have been designed and implemented in various parts of the world. I have also provided support to volunteer groups, non-government organizations, and to governments in Canada and Malaysia.  All of this has been pro bono, without any interest in financial compensation.

The question that is probably arising is, why? Why provide all this effort, for no monetary gain? Why devote your time and energy to conduct this research and write these reports and attend these meetings? Why get involved?

The answer is quite simple: I do it because I am good at it; I do it because it helps me learn, and above all, I do it to make a difference. I believe in public transport because I believe it will give us better communities and more economic growth. I am confident that my neighbours and friends and community members all can benefit from better public transport.

When you restrict your thinking you limit the potential for opportunities. We in Malaysia have limited ourselves by accepting the idea that public transport is a service for the “lower-income group.” And so, we as a society fail to understand the opportunities associated with public transport. Government and businesses fail to explore the opportunities for economic growth and the benefits that come from investment in public transport. Consumers lock themselves into financing schemes to pay for relatively expensive cars and expensive petrol, and fall into the trap of believing that having a car is a sign of great social status.

We are like fish, taking the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

Transit-oriented and pedestrian friendly communities are the way of the future.  The price of oil may have dropped recently but the rapid rise should be a lesson for us.  We as a society cannot focus on one mode of transport any longer.  We must create communities that welcome motorcycles, bicycles, buses, and pedestrians along with cars. The era of cheap oil is over, and we must change ourselves willingly before that change is forced upon us.

But here in Malaysia, instead of building transit-oriented communities, we have instead built communities around the car. We try to fit public transport in afterwards (often after we are overwhelmed by traffic congestion) and then wonder why it isn’t working.  We invest even greater amounts of money in ad hoc solutions that attempt to fix the transport problems – more highways, flyovers, ramps, tunnels, and free-flow traffic lanes.

We have also caught on to the “LRT dream” and established (without much thought) that “LRT” is the only way to improve public transportation.  We have built “light rail transit” lines and plan to build more. But these lines are “light” in terms of passengers carried, and “heavy” in terms of design, engineering, construction, and maintenance costs.  And, because the investment does not seem to be successful (because the roads and the LRT are packed) we choose to build more of the same.

To give you an understanding of this, consider the 120km of rail lines proposed in the KLCity2020 Draft Plan.  Most of these lines will cost RM200-300 million per km. It will cost a total of RM40 billion to build all of these lines, but the capacity will be the same as the existing KL Monorail and Kelana Jaya LRT.  

I believe that the reader might be familiar with this description of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again hoping that the next time the results will be different.

I say, it is time to stop the insanity.  Rather than spending all our funds in the Klang Valley alone, we should be thinking about improving public transportation throughout the country.  If the 120km of lines proposed in the KLCity2020 Draft plan are built as a mix of Bus Rapid Transit and Rapid Tram lines, they could be built for RM40-75 million per km or approximately 7-10 billion, which would spare another RM30 billion for the rest of the country!

Indonesia has invested small amounts of money in public transportation but the results have been very impressive.  The Transjakarta bus-rapid transit network now has 7 lines operating, with 3 more under construction.  There will be 15 lines in the network by 2012.  

Armed with a new understanding of public transport, Jakarta has built “light” rapid transit at “light” costs, but their network is “heavy” on the results.  In contrast, here in the Klang Valley our “light” rail lines are “heavy” in cost: they have taken more time to design and build, and the results have been less than impressive.

You can criticize bus lanes and bus ways and say that they are taking lanes away from cars. I say, cars do not rule the road. Roads are channels for the movement and we can move far more people with rapid transit than with cars. Bus lanes and busways will be a net gain – moving more people to more places. Costs are lower, the network can be introduced faster, and the benefits are just as high.

Solutions of our traffic congestion and public transport woes are staring us in the face, but we are still in denial and dreaming about LRT.  And while we dream, we are falling behind our neighbours who are investing in all forms of public transport to move their people – and moving their economies forward at the same time.  We need solutions now, not tomorrow, which is why we have to stop dreaming the “LRT dream” and open our eyes to reality.

Text Moaz Ahmad Yusof

Moaz Yusof currently resides in Subang Jaya and teaches at Taylor’s University College. His experience in public transit has been sought by the Ministry of Finance where he prepared a report entitled User Perspectives on the State of Public Transporation – Suggestions on how to improve it. E-mail him at transportkini@gmail.com