Why add to holiday traffic congestion with toll-free days?

 

Were you in one of the estimated 2 million cars in the North-South Highway crawl on Saturday (Dec 23), the eve of the year-end holidays?

As with almost every motorist who takes the opportunity to “balik kampung” for festive holidays, you would know that there would be extraordinarily heavy traffic on that three-day Christmas holiday weekend coinciding with the school break.

The announcement of a toll-free day on Saturday would have added to the congestion.

What I don’t get is: why do national leaders offer toll-free travel on the days when traffic will already be at its peak? That’s like adding petrol to a wildfire.

The practice of toll-free travel on festive holidays was started by Ismail Sabri Yaakob when he was prime minister. Because he was seen as an interim leader who sought popularity, there wasn’t much comment on the appropriateness of this measure.

There are many analogies to illustrate why granting toll-free travel on a traffic-peak day is counter-intuitive.

For instance, cinemas never give discounts at peak show times. Conversely, they offer cheap tickets for matinee shows during non-peak hours to attract viewers to fill otherwise empty halls.

In the case of highways, it might be better to offer toll-free travel for the period midnight to 6am when the highway is usually free flowing at a decent pace, or on non-peak days as advised by PLUS, the biggest highway operator.

In any case, toll-free days do not come free. The government must compensate the highway concessionaires for the tolls that were accumulated during the toll-free period.

But is this year’s latest toll waiver mere populism?

Could it be driven by business interests that want to push the issue that it’s time for motorists to pay more to avoid traffic congestion, including a multi-lane free flow system that has been estimated to cost RM3.46 billion.

On that note, many ministers from the previous governments over the past four years have talked about toll highways, traffic congestion and solutions. Adding to the complexity is the monopoly of the toll collection system which didn’t leave room for payment systems beyond the Touch ‘n Go card.

While the payment system is now more liberalised and includes payment by credit card, this is limited to 11 toll plazas on open highways, that is, those that collect toll on entry.

However, there are some positive developments.

First, entry points on PLUS highways are installed with an automatic number plate recognition system; in the next few years exit points will also be equipped with such cameras. This means that cars entering the toll highway will be identified and can be charged once there is a law that prescribes penalties for non-payment of tolls incurred.

Second, construction of the East Coast Rail Link is proceeding at a brisk rate and should be completed on schedule by 2025. That should take some cars off the three toll highways from the Klang Valley to the east coast states of Pahang, Terengganu, and Kelantan.

Third, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has reinforced the message that there will be no negotiated tender for the multi-lane free flow proposal. “We will go through a proper and transparent process as we have already made clear,” he said on Dec 22.

Earlier this month, then works minister Alexander Nanta Linggi said the MLFF project was inherited from the previous government; while no decision had been made, any implementation of the MLFF would not happen until December 2024 at the earliest.

Nanta is being optimistic because any implementation of a barrier free, multilane free flow system must be preceded by a law that penalises non-payment of tolls. As it stands, the toll highway concessionaires are merely empowered to collect the toll that has been unpaid, a legal process that costs much more than the toll that was evaded.

To put it in perspective, there are 700,000 new cars this year that will join the total traffic. Traffic congestion on festive season peak traffic days is bound to happen unless the government mitigates.

Instead of toll-free travel on festive season peaks, the government should use the equivalent toll compensation money to subsidise express bus fares for Malaysians. Based on the projected 2 million cars on the PLUS highway on Dec 23, it would cost the government a conservative RM20 million a day if an average toll of RM10 is levied on each car.

To make public transport more attractive, the government can work with mobility-as-a-service providers like mobility app, Trevo, Malaysia’s largest digital car-rental marketplace, so that those who indeed travel by bus can be given some cash in their digital wallets for the last mile home

Highway concessionaires are now lobbying the government to let them operate the MLFF system themselves. They were responding to reports of a proposal for an MLFF system to be operated by the Malaysian highway authority.

Highway congestion during holiday seasons is common across the world, such as the start of summer holidays in France or festive seasons in China where traffic out of Beijing and Shanghai can involve days of highway congestion .

In Malaysia, the construction of the North South Highway was a response to the global recession of 1985 and this pump-priming initiative was led by former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and supported by former finance minister Daim Zainuddin.

Malaysian banks didn’t want to lend because there was no data on how much traffic could be expected on the new highway. Morgan Grenfell, as the project’s main financial adviser, proposed a US dollar loan – rejected by United Engineers Malaysia because a US dollar loan for a ringgit-derived income would expose Malaysia to a bad risk.

Finally, it was a RM150 million soft loan from the government that got the highway project off the ground.

While the popularity of the North South Highway makes it a victim of its own success, we need to consider carefully how to manage it without incurring wasteful spending.

If for instance, there is not enough water supply, we should look at minimising non-revenue water by changing pipes rather than building more water tanks.

Similarly, the North South Highway festive season peak traffic can be mitigated by selective measures rather than a blanket subsidy that congests traffic and generates more carbon and greenhouse gases. - FMT

The writer can be reached on facebook.com/yamin vong

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.