A busload of woes

With the deplorable bus service, owning a car has become more of a necessity than luxury. Will there only be an efficient bus service if Malaysians change the government?

COMMENT

In the old days, the bus system was quite good as there were choices. There were the Toong Fong and the Foh Hup buses, the Sri Jaya buses, the Len Seng buses, the Selangor Len Omnibus and of course the minibuses as well.

Although some of the buses were rickety and bone-shaker types, they provided regular service from the housing estates to the city centre. It was the mode of transport for the low-income group and on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be fair to give them a rating of 7.

But those days are now long gone. The bus service has now deteriorated to such an extent that it would garner only a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10.

There is no connectivity, services are slow or irregular and in some cases, there is no bus service. This is due to Rapid KL wanting to monopolize the routes but at the same time lacking the capabilities of doing so.

The government is also not keen to assist the struggling private bus operators. Overall, these are the contributory factors to the deterioration of the bus service.

Take for instance, Taman Bukit Maluri in Kepong. This old housing estate used to be serviced by the Selangor Len Omnibus Company but not so anymore as the route was taken over by Rapid KL for a short while but Rapid KL has abandoned this housing estate.

The residents here who do not own a car will have to use the commuter train at Kepong Sentral. Then one either has to walk to Kepong Sentral or get a taxi. As for the residents in Bandar Menjalara, also in Kepong, there is no bus service either. However for those in Menjalara B, they could take a shortcut (15 to 20 minutes walk) to Taman Sri Bintang and take the Rapid KL U11 bus which goes to Kuala Lumpur via Kepong Baru. Otherwise it is a 45 minute walk to the Kepong commuter train station.

With regard to the U11 bus, the waiting time ranges from 30 minutes (if you are lucky) to more than two hours (if you have just missed the bus). Due to this bus lottery, it is imperative to either own a car or a motorcycle.

Residents of Taman Cuepacs in Cheras also share the same fate as over the past five years they have had to endure up to two hours of waiting for Rapid KL feeder bus number T405 to get to the Bandar Tasik Selatan LRT Station and Leisure Mall.

Students have complained that they are at the Taman Alam Jaya bus stop around 6am but the bus only arrives at 7.30am or 8am. Moreover, although class ends at 6pm, the students only reach home around 9.30pm.

No concrete efforts taken

Many people rely on the bus service and there is certainly a need to add more buses on the road. For example, the city of Singapore with a size of 700 square kilometres has nearly 3,500 buses serving a population of less than five million but Kuala Lumpur which has a population of more than six million (excluding the foreign workers) only has about 900 buses servicing an area of 2,900 square kilometres.

Therefore, the number of buses on the road per population ratio leaves much to be desired and this is a major reason for poor public transport service and usage.

Besides that, the BN federal government makes no concrete effort to improve public transport.

Whenever the government deems it fit to increase the price of petrol and diesel, they will pacify public anger by announcing mitigating factors such as allocating additional investments to improve public transport from the so-called subsidy savings obtained. But once the initial public anger subsides, the government will keep mum and all will be forgotten.

This happened in 2006 when the BN administration implemented a significant fuel price hike of 18.5% from RM1.62 to RM1.92. The government promised that the RM4.4 billion resulting from the petrol subsidy savings would be used to set up a Public Transportation Fund to improve public transport but this quickly came to nothing.

In June 2008, the government increased petrol price by 40% from RM1.92 to RM2.70 and in August of that same year, the government made a promise to inject RM35 billion to improve public transport. History repeated itself as this too came to nothing.

All these examples merely goes to show that the government is not serious in improving public transport. This is outright mismanagement of the public transport system.

Prasarana for example, had spent RM93 million to buy over 1,294 used buses from two failed concessionaires DRB-Hicom and Park May Bhd in 2003, only to have 1,139 or 88% of them consigned to the scrap heap two years later and ultimately decommissioned in 2005.

Malaysians ‘robbed’ twice

Malaysians in this case were “robbed” twice, first when Prasarana took over these buses using the ridiculous criteria such as “the 5km test” where a bus is considered to be functioning if it can be driven for five kilometres without stopping. This resulted in the government paying good money to the failed concessionaires to take over these buses.

Secondly, Prasarana took the opportunity to decommission and write-off these buses at the shortest possible time, even when some of these buses were really in operating condition requiring only minor maintenance, so that the management was able to order a whole new fleet of buses.

Consultants Raine & Horne were appointed to evaluate the state of these buses between January and March 2006 although these buses were already being decommissioned in November of the previous year.

Raine & Horne reported that the value of the buses which were taken over by Prasarana was approximately RM68.34 million. However, Prasarana decided to write-off the buses and sold them as scrap, expecting to recover only RM4.44 million or only 6.5% of the market value of these buses.

It is hence unsurprising, given the management of Malaysia’s largest-owned public transport company, the state of affairs could only get worse. Syarikat Prasarana Negara Bhd has recently been restructured and its top management replaced, but we have yet to see any real concrete changes to our public transport system.

Thus it is obvious now that the BN government’s lackadaisical effort in improving the Malaysian public transport system is the cause for traffic congestion as owning a car has become a necessity instead of a luxury. This will eat into the disposable income of the citizens and the hardest hit will of course be the low-wage earners.

Will public transport only be improved with a change of government?

Selena Tay believes in the policies of Pakatan Rakyat.