malaysiakini | 19 October 2010
Five DAP MPs from the Federal Territories are strongly opposed to the government proposal to build a RM5 billion 100-storey commercial building in the heart of the city.
They said that the building will not improve Kuala Lumpur’s international standing but will exacerbate the traffic congestion in the area.
A fully integrated transportation network is essential for any metropolis to prosper or more fundamentally to speed up the movement of millions of office workers to and fro from their place of residence to their respective downtown’s destination.
Without it, the traffic congestion, noise nuisance and smog will cause the city to decay to a point that it becomes uninhabitable and lifeless.
A good example of well integrated transportation network is the London’s or Singapore’s or Hong Kong’s, or Paris’s transportation networks that integrate flawlessly the MRT with buses, taxi-cab as well as regional railway networks.
I opined that DBKL has no notion as to what is an integrated transport networks.
The evidence spurs from the fact that KL transportation networks are not only fragmented but are operated by too many operators – thanks to the greedy businessman and corrupted politician- who only have interest in promoting their own transportation vehicles. Consequently, if you want to travel from origin A to destination D; you end up having to use many different modes of transport to reach your destination. For example, between A to B by bus, B to C by monorail and eventually from C to D by LRT. Worst of all, you need to pray very hard that along the way the weather hold.
The design of Mass Rapid Transit must start by putting the commuter’s or more appropriately ordinary Rakyat’s interest and convenient above everything else.
It cannot be a business decision as all MRT in the world loses money except for an exceptional few.
It must not be a political decision either.
It would be corruption in the grand scale if MRT is constructed to solve the traffic problem caused by powerful businessman or politically or government link developers who never allocate a penny to address the traffic problems caused by their development.
Menara Warisan’s developer PNB must be compelled to allocate a significant amount of development fund to address the traffic problem caused by their mammoth development. Failing which, Rakyat must stand united to demand DBKL to reject their proposal.
To ask the Rakyat via DBKL to foot the traffic dispersion bill is scandalous.
I truly agree on the priority to focus on transportation network to bring our country to next level. We have good roads to certain extend but fail to realize the importance of MRTs to connect the rural to urban areas as wells as to reduce the havoc traffic jam which almost all radio channels I tuned on will broadcast….Why can’t our govt bench mark with Spore???? Don’t tell me they are small country and ease to manage…why not you take each state as Spore and manage through this with righ people who can deliver the needs to the public. Wake-up govt if not we forever behind our neighbours……So stop a while and THINK ABOUT IT….to spend on sky scrapers which to scrap eventually or…to build something that benefits the nation of PEOPLE!