Transit: Reveal feasibility reports to end MRT land acquisition debate

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 18 — Public transport advocates have challenged Putrajaya to make public feasibility studies into urban rail transit plans and end raging controversy over the need to acquire privately-owned land in the capital city.

Both the Light Rail Transit (LRT) extension and the Klang Valley Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) projects have stirred up public anger as residents are asked to vacate their land or tolerate noise from the tracks.

But the Association For The Improvement Of Mass Transit (Transit) said that feasibility reports done prior to routes being made available for public feedback should be revealed to prove that the current alignments were the best possible option.

“Without this information, it is difficult to say for sure if the current alignments are the best. The government should release the feasibility studies so we know if the route and even the location of stations are the best option,” its spokesman Rajiv Rishykaran told The Malaysian Insider.

Rajiv, who is representing the group while its chairman Muhammad Zulkarnain Hamzah is in Canada pursuing further studies, said that there were 13 feasibility studies done for the extension of the LRT lines “but nobody knows what the other 12 options were.”

“How, for example, it is running under Jalan Sultan in such a way as to affect the least number of landowners but how do we know that going through Chinatown is the best route in the first place?” the Subang Jaya local councillor added.

The alignment of the LRT extension and MRT project have been met with loud protests from those affected while critics say that they have resulted in bloated price tags of RM7 billion and RM50 billion respectively.

The Malaysian Insider understands that only one of the six options for the 51km Sungai Buloh-Kajang (SBK) line, that has been blighted by rushed tender deadlines, slow decision-making and an abrupt change of project owners, was made available to the public.

Putrajaya had announced last month that MRT Co would take over from Syarikat Prasarana Berhad as project owners effective September 1, after months of tweaking alignments and revising tender requirements of the SBK line.

Owners of prime land in Bukit Bintang and the historic Chinatown areas in the capital have been up in arms over being told that the government will invoke the Land Acquisition Act to obtain land that some of the residents have held for generations.

About 30 of them protested in the Bukit Bintang area yesterday over the move to acquire their land.

Despite politicians from both sides of the divide insisting that strata titles be issued in order to allow underground tunnelling to go ahead without evicting landowners, authorities refuse to guarantee that such a solution will be implemented.

The Najib administration has had to deny claims that the acquisition and development of land along the SBK route is the only way for the government to pay for the multi-billion ringgit project.

The swift denial came after The Malaysian Insider reported that Pemandu chief executive Datuk Seri Idris Jala had stated that the government was pursuing a “rail-and-property” model as it would not be able to recover the cost through fares alone.

“For the government to manage the project efficiently and sustainably, fare box revenue will not be sufficient to finance the high capex and opex for the MRT network,” Idris said in the letter sent to the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Malaysia on August 23.