What 2026 demands is courage in land-use decisions, road pricing and letting go of car-centric assumptions that no longer serve our cities or economy.
From Wan Agyl Wan Hassan
If 2025 is remembered for anything in Malaysia’s transport story, it will be as the year that the physical pieces finally fell into place.
After more than a decade of planning, construction and political debate, rail lines opened, buses returned to routes long abandoned, fares were stabilised, and long-delayed projects edged closer to completion. The hardware of public transport arrived and, for the first time in years, the direction felt broadly right.
But if 2025 was about building, 2026 must be about belief. Belief that public transport is not a fallback option for those without cars, but the backbone of how a modern, competitive and inclusive Malaysia moves.
The government deserves credit for several difficult but necessary decisions. The continuation of the My50 pass during a period of fiscal tightening signalled a clear recognition that public transport is a cost-of-living instrument, not merely a mobility product.
Ridership recovery across Klang Valley rail and bus networks did not happen by accident but reflects a conscious choice to keep public transport affordable while households remain under pressure. Outside the Klang Valley, the expansion of performance-based bus contracts under BAS.MY marked a long-overdue shift away from survival subsidies towards service delivery, reliability and accountability.
On the infrastructure front, MRT2 demonstrated that large rail projects in Malaysia can be delivered with discipline, ridership uptake and operational credibility.
The nearing completion of the Johor–Singapore RTS Link also reintroduced something that has been missing from Malaysia’s transport narrative for years: confidence that regional rail integration can actually happen. Even where projects such as the Gemas–Johor Bahru electrification struggled, the issues were no longer invisible. Delays were discussed openly and expectations were recalibrated more honestly than in the past.
Yet, 2025 also exposed a deeper structural contradiction that Malaysia can no longer afford to ignore. We continue to invest billions in public transport while simultaneously designing cities, approving developments and managing roads as if cars will always come first.
Public transport is still too often treated as an “add-on” – something to be retrofitted after land has been zoned, roads widened and parking minimums locked in.
This is why the conversation must change in 2026.
The next phase of reform is not about announcing new mega projects. It is about enabling more people to access public transport, whether they arrive on foot, by bus, by motorcycle, or yes, even by car. Park-and-ride should no longer be seen as a moral failure of transit planning, but as a practical bridge in a country where car ownership is deeply embedded.
The goal is not to punish drivers overnight, but to give them credible, dignified alternatives that actually work.
At the same time, future urban development must finally pivot towards transit-first logic. Too many high-density projects continue to receive planning approval without firm commitments to bus priority, pedestrian access or genuine first-and-last-mile connectivity.
When public transport is treated as an afterthought in land-use decisions, the system is forced to chase demand instead of shaping it. This is not a funding problem; it is a governance problem – one that sits squarely at the intersection of planning authorities, local councils and transport agencies.
2026 should also be the year that Malaysia stops being afraid of managing demand. Congestion pricing pilots, carefully designed, transparently communicated and geographically limited, are no longer radical ideas. Cities across Asia have shown that pricing road space fairly is not anti-car; it is pro-efficiency. Revenue from such pilots can and should be ring-fenced directly into bus lanes, service frequency and pedestrian infrastructure, making the social contract visible and defensible.
In parallel, the quiet success of multi-lane free-flow and automatic number plate recognition (ANPR)-based tolling pilots should be scaled into a national conversation about how we price roads in the digital age.
A fully ANPR-enabled tolling system is not just about smoother highways; it is a prerequisite for smarter congestion management, fairer charging and, eventually, more integrated mobility pricing across modes. Technology is no longer the barrier. The question is whether we are ready to use it as a policy tool rather than merely an operational upgrade.
None of this requires abandoning fiscal discipline. In fact, the opposite is true. As transport budgets tighten, every ringgit must work harder; measured not by kilometres built, but by minutes saved, trips enabled and households reached. The most effective transport investments of the past year were not always the most expensive ones; they were the ones that made public transport usable in daily life.
The government has signalled, repeatedly, that it understands the direction of travel. 2025 proved that intent can translate into action.
What 2026 demands is courage at the edges: in land-use decisions, in road pricing, in letting go of car-centric assumptions that no longer serve our cities or our economy.
Malaysia has built enough to move forward. The task now is to let people actually move – not just with their cars, but beyond them. - FMT
Wan Agyl Wan Hassan is the founder and CEO of MY Mobility Vision, a transport think tank.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.
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