Much ado was made last week about extraordinary traffic jams in the run-up to Chinese New Year and Ramadan, which are next to each other this year. Naturally, this gave rise to lots of views and opinions online about the state of our transport infrastructure, whether public or private.
Some regurgitated the old chestnut of the lack of convenient first- and last-mile solutions in our public transport while others brought up Malaysia’s voracious appetite for cars (a record 820,752 new cars were registered in the country last year).
According to transport minister Anthony Loke, his ministry is focusing on improving public transport, and the government has no immediate plans to curb car ownership, which, as many of us know, is among Asia’s highest per capita.
So if nothing much is going to be (or can be) done vis-à-vis cars, what about bikes? Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) vice-chancellor Datuk Prof Ir Dr Ahmad Farhan Mohamad Sadullah opines that the high number of motorcycles in the country is an overlooked contributing factor to road congestion, and that more needs to be done to encourage bikers to shift to public transport.
“We need to start thinking about the push factor, how we want to shift people from private to public transport. The alternative is already there, it’s just how we want to ensure that the generalised cost of travel will start to make those in mid- and low-income groups feel that they have no choice but to use public transport,” he told Astro Awani in a video interview.
“We have a bit of a problem compared to other countries because our private transport also includes motorcycles, and we have a big number of them, they also disrupt the road capacity and influence the level of congestion. That’s the problem we need to understand and that we have to solve.
“Now we talk a lot about car users – too far (a step) – I feel motorcyclists need to be shifted to public transport. But of course the motorcycle has an advantage in that it can cilok (lane-split),” Ahmad Farhan added.
We’re sure you have a lot on your mind – share with us your thoughts in the comments. Perhaps you may have an unheard-of solution to our traffic woes?
