Public transport in Malaysia: too little, too late? – Roger Teoh

“Will Malaysians one day be able to enjoy good public transportation systems similar to the UK?”

This question has always been on my mind. Here I am, sitting on a comfortable train travelling from Manchester (the second largest city in the UK) to the capital, London, while reading through the latest Budget 2015 released by the federal government back home.

Travelling around major cities in the UK and Europe is easy and convenient. There are trains available from Manchester to London every 20 minutes. Can the same be said about travelling from Penang to Kuala Lumpur or other inter-city travelling in Malaysia?

The Barisan Nasional government will always say it is unfair to compare Malaysia, a developing nation, to the UK, a developed nation, as they had a long head start. But this excuse can’t be used when we compare ourselves to Singapore, or Taiwan or even Korea. What head start did they have, when we were economically superior to them just half a century ago?

Our problem is that we have been standing idle in the same spot for too long. Ever since the British left Malaya, our train and rail networking system initially developed by the Brits has not really progressed much. While other countries have since developed high-speed rail as well as mature intra-city rail and bus networks, we are still dependent on an 8-hour night train to get from KL to Penang, a distance of only 400km!

It is true that our government recently announced the latest High Speed Rail Network & its stations connecting Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. However, we were told recently in a parliamentary reply from the government that this High Speed Rail Network is an independent transportation system which does not connect or has no integration at all to existing transportation infrastructures. For example, people still would have to drive in order to reach the High Speed Rail Stations, which does not solve any problems at all. Does this bring ease and convenience for using public transport?

Budget 2015

The 2015 Budget proposed by Barisan Nasional shows a staggering 81.6% for Operating Expenditure and only 18.4% allocated to Development Expenditure. Not only that, only RM3.3 billion (1.2% of total budget expenditure) is allocated to the Transport Ministry compared to RM19.6 billion to the Prime Minister Department (7.2% of total budget expenditure).

As of July 2014, Malaysian household debt had already hit an astonishing 89.2% of GDP with the breakdown of debts showing car loans to be the most significant portion at 51%, compared to student loans (33%), housing loans (29%), and personal loans (15%) according to data from the Federation of Malaysian Consumers Association, Fomca.

This figure above shows that owning a personal car for transport is already a “need” rather than a “want” for Malaysians. Making matters worse, Budget 2015 shows no political will from the government to drastically improve the national public transportation system.

The consumption of cars and real estate is the main generation of growth worldwide. For example in China, it is a national Chinese policy to build roads and highways to maintain high growth rates. Therefore in the case of Malaysia, is our government trying to follow suit to in order for national car producers (cronies) to maintain a high profit margin at the rakyat’s expense?

Not to forget too that highways proposed and built come at a cost of having toll rates with unreasonable periods of return that also ultimately benefit no one but the cronies.

Consequences of poor public transportation system

Since the late 1990s, fuel prices have risen faster than disposable income and the trend looks all set to continue. What’s more, because of the ultimate depletion of fossil fuels and imperatives for climate protection, energy for transport will no longer be abundant and inexpensive but scarce and increasingly unaffordable.

Despite the hike in petrol prices in the last few weeks, we are told of yet even more highway projects instead of development in public transportation system. This will further lock us into our dependency on fossil fuels. This increase in the need for fuel will also increase the amount of subsidies paid by the government. Without an alternative solution, is this even sustainable in the long run?

Additionally, more investments in roads and highways instead of public transport encourages people to drive more, resulting in an inevitable increase in amount of vehicles on the road. With more traffic comes more congestion and more limited parking spaces in city centres.

It is a matter of time before the congestion issues in urban areas around Malaysia will be as bad as other notorious cities such as Jakarta and Manila, where public transport is also just as absent. Therefore, without a policy change in the near future, is Malaysia heading into transport chaos?

* Roger Teoh is a third-year undergraduate studying civil engineering at the University of Manchester. TMI