DBKL studying doing away with parking bays in buildings

The Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) is studying ways to disallow vehicle parking bays in buildings in an effort to reduce road traffic and encourage the city folk to use public transport, theSun reported yesterday.

Federal Territories Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said the policy of doing away with parking bays in a building has become a trend of a developed city, and Kuala Lumpur should follow suit.

"Look at what's happening in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Melbourne, London. The building style or redevelopment has changed and these buildings are not even allowed to build a carpark.

"They are trying to deter the people from using cars in the city and this is among the things that we are looking at so that we can be on par with the greatest cities in the world," Tengku Adnan said when attending an event in Kuala Lumpur.

Rapid urbanisation in Kuala Lumpur has changed the intensity and the pattern of land use in the city, he said.

"This trend has become a norm that KLites need to adapt to. They need to accept this fact and change their old mentality to a modern metropolis lifestyle," he said, adding city dwellers need to embrace these changes as Kuala Lumpur is only a small city with an area of approximately 243 square km.

However, he acknowledged that the city needs to have a good public infrastructure before embarking on a modern metropolis lifestyle.

"I would like to say sorry because at the moment there's a lot of congestion, a lot of potholes all over the city and there are a lot of things that need to be upgraded.

"But we cannot address this issue right now because there's MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) construction, new highways under construction and also new roads and there's a lot of development in certain places.

"So this has caused city dwellers to feel inconvenient. But please bear with us and once all these projects are completed, we will not face such problems any more," the minister added.- Mkini