Why our transport ‘software’ is failing the hardware

It isn’t an operational failure, but a coordination failure between land-use planning, traffic management, and enforcement.

From Wan Agyl Wan Hassan

For years, Malaysia’s public transport debate has been shaped by a quiet bias toward the visible.

We celebrate the arrival of multi billion-ringgit rail lines — the hardware of our cities — while treating the bus network, the walk to the stop, and the wait at the curb as peripheral concerns. Not because these elements are unimportant, but because they are less photogenic.

Recent research on Greater Kuala Lumpur mobility finally provides an empirical scan of what commuters have long understood instinctively: our transport system is not broken, but it is fragile.

It functions well enough to be used, yet remains unreliable enough to be abandoned at the first hint of friction. That distinction matters.

Fragile systems do not fail dramatically. They fail quietly, through small moments of uncertainty that accumulate until trust is withdrawn.

This fragility explains the daily calculation made by thousands of Malaysians each morning. Data on bus performance — early departures, inconsistent headways, and the absence of basic shelter at thousands of stops — reveals why public transport often feels like a gamble rather than a choice.

When a bus departs two minutes early, this is not a minor scheduling error. For the commuter relying on it, it is a total system failure: a missed connection, a long wait in the heat, and a late arrival at work. At that moment, public transport stops being an option and becomes a risk.

What is often described as preference is, in reality, risk management. This is why modern rail lines, when surrounded by vast parking structures and poor first-mile access, struggle to change behaviour.

The train itself may be fast and reliable, but the journey to reach it remains uncertain. Faced with that uncertainty, commuters retreat to the only option that still offers predictability which is obvious — the private car or even motorcycle.

This is also why dismissing buses as a lost cause misses the point. Buses do not need to fly. They need to glide. Where priority is protected and enforced, buses work. Where it is treated as optional, they inherit the very congestion they are meant to solve.

The contrast between relatively consistent feeder services and the volatility of the wider urban bus network is not accidental; it is the outcome of policy choices.

This is not an operational failure by operators, but a coordination failure between land-use planning, traffic management, and enforcement. As long as buses are left to compete with private vehicles for the same road space, no amount of fleet expansion will deliver reliability.

As Malaysia moves through 2026, the challenge is no longer about building more. We have built enough tracks. What we lack is belief in the system.

Rebuilding that belief requires courage at the edges of the network. It begins with fixing the anatomy of the stop. A system cannot attract users if its point of entry is unsafe, exposed, or uncomfortable. Reliability starts before the vehicle arrives.

It also requires reforming how we treat parking in our cities. As long as car storage is quietly bundled into housing and development approvals, driving will remain the most convenient option, regardless of how much we invest in public transport. And it demands honesty about managing demand.

Road pricing and fuel subsidy rationalisation are not punitive tools; they are instruments to correct longstanding policy contradictions. We cannot promote public transport while making driving the most reliable and most subsidised choice.

The persistence of car dependency is not a failure of public behaviour. It is the predictable outcome of a system that rewards certainty in driving while tolerating uncertainty in public transport.

Malaysia’s transport system now stands at a crossroads. We can continue patching a fragile network with tactical fixes, or we can finally integrate the software — reliability, walkability, and priority — that our hardware was always meant to support. - FMT

Wan Agyl Wan Hassan is a transport expert.

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