Flyovers, road-widening won’t eliminate jams

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At least one person in government now realises that building flyovers and widening roads won’t solve congestion on the roads.

While Penang plans to build more flyovers and widen roads, Sarawak is thinking of moving in the opposition direction. Abang Jo points out that some cities abroad are already dismantling flyovers and replacing them with more public buses and trains.

This report from Saiful Bahari of the Borneo Post:

KUCHING: Building flyovers and widening roads would not solve traffic congestion problems. These approaches would, in fact, exacerbate the problem by inducing more traffic.

Housing and Urban Development Minister Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg said these outdated approaches need to be re-examined.

“The issue here is to manage the demand for travel by making use of existing infrastructure. We term this as a new realism in transport policy,” said Abang Johari at the opening of ‘Focus Result Delivery (FRD) Lab for Kuching Urban Public Transport’ here yesterday,

Abang Johari explained that having greater accessibility to the city would encourage more people to drive their own transport rather than using public transport as an alternative.

“There is an uncontrollable increase in car usage due to the lack of alternative transport in urban Kuching, leading to saturated and congested urban roads,” he said.

Citing examples from the United States, Abang Johari said a few cities there had resorted to dismantling flyovers and replaced them with more public buses and trains.

“What we are looking at are solutions that can be considered. For example, a terminal with parking lots at each housing estate where there would be public transport to bring the people to the city centre.”

He revealed that his ministry was continuously seeking ways to make traffic flow smoother while having greater accessibility to the city via affordable urban public transport.

“We have to find ways to ensure reliability and quick journey time, enhancing comfort and convenience while at the same time ensuring safety to the public.”

On the 5-day lab session, Abang Johari said he hoped the participants would look into issues such as integrating public transport, planning the system, regulatory instruments, body to implement, monitor and regulate and also how to make the system sustainable.

Met by reporters after the opening, Abang Johari revealed that he had requested RM200 million from the federal government to handle the issue.

“In Klang valley, around RM7 billion was allocated to solve the problems and as we are still at the initial stage I had requested for RM200 million which will include discussion sessions on potential and feasible solutions.”

Fifty five participants from both the private and public sectors are attending the lab session. These include officers from Rapid Kuching, Sarawak Transport, Public Works Department and the local councils.

Also present yesterday were Assistant Minister of Housing and Urban Development Abdul Wahab Aziz and the ministry’s Permanent Secretary Affandi Keli.

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Ong Eu Soon
26 May 2011 1.01am

Now great Anil find it difficult to reconcile his support for PR and the efforts of LGe in building more roads, tunnels and concrete jungles. Like all sycophant supporters of LGe, great Anil also let his sentiment blind his judgement when come to policies making. For a simple transport solution, he can chose side and ignore the real problem that plague the transport system. Showing his anger to me is more important than solving the transport issues. I may be coming hard on the PR state government, but the reality is that LGe is of no direction, only want development.… Read more »

Jebat_Musibat
Jebat_Musibat
25 May 2011 6.16pm

50 years BN gov still wont learn anything. What can we expect from them? Cut subsidy here and there.. pretend to make a better Public Transport and bla bla.. The end of the story? NOTHING!

moo_t
25 May 2011 2.30pm

Yawn. I never believe such ranking of government official will bring any change to the road building frenzy policies. The problem lies within the country policies : federal government allocate the country road building budget and rights. This make road building a pork barrel project scheme rather than necessity. As long as municipal councils, state governments DOES NOT account for the road building cost, the pork barrel will continue. Just let the local councils pay for the road building cost, you will learn that many municipal councils including those rich urban one, will throw themselves in heavy road debt and… Read more »

Gerakan K
Gerakan K
25 May 2011 1.40pm

So far away anil. Otherwise we may *transfer* that special one as LGE assistant to limit/reverse the damage being done for Penang.

Should we organize a peaceful protest against the champions of the concrete jungle ???

Sean
Sean
25 May 2011 2.26pm
Reply to  Gerakan K

Is there a Penang Critical Mass? I see YouTube vids for KL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRWPp7U6Ofs&w=300
and Putrajaya:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTflWnHGlLs&w=300
… although the Putrajaya one is a bit weird – ‘critical mass’ seems a bit unnecessary on an empty road!