transportation – the _

Recently, I wrote election manifestos should have overarching themes, while avoiding the kitchen sink approach. While I focus on Pakatan Harapan, Barisan Nasional also had a kitchen sink approach before. Kitchen sink is the favorite way of doing things among political parties.

I do not have the energy to come out with a manifesto myself, but if I had to choose one area, then it has to be transport policy, which intersects with many other areas that includes fiscal, climate and urban development policy.

My ideal transport policy will be constrained by at least 3 factors:

Promoting responsible fiscal policy to rapidly build up government capacity in healthcare, education, defense and overall industrial policy
Reducing carbon emissions with respect to concerns for climate change
Improving connectivity across the country, especially in and around major cities where most of the population work and live.

These constraints mean, especially in the cities, fewer private vehicles on the road, and greater reliance on public transport.

This list is not comprehensive, but I think the areas it broaches are major concerns. Here are my preferred policies.

Fuel policy: Switch from petrol subsidy to cash transfer

Current fuel subsidy policy is expensive. It takes resources away from many other areas. As reported in the media, as of June, 2022 subsidy bill alone (not including other social assistance) was expected to hit RM78 billion. This is bigger than 2022 allocation for the Ministry of Health (RM32 billion), Ministry of Defense (RM16 billion) or Ministry of Education (RM53 billion). While subsidies alleviate short term pain, it does not build long term capacity: it takes resources away and weakens already underfunded health, defense and education systems, among others. Imagine what these systems would look like if they had an additional RM78 billion for their services and asset acquisition.

Here, I would like to return to the late-2000 policy of switching from fuel subsidies to cash transfers (before it was abused as goodies). It does not have to be a one-to-one switch since cash has higher value than fuel subsidies: the former has many more use cases than fuel subsidies.

Cash transfer implementation will have to be discussed elsewhere, together with the introduction of tax identification number.

Fuel policy: Tax petrol through SST (or GST)

Simultaneously, I advocate fuel tax. SST (or GST) should be charged on purchase of petrol. While I do not support ring-fencing income from fuel tax for any particular purpose, additional income here should be able to fund a large cash transfer program, as well as to introduce new public transport service while improving existing ones (more about public transport later).

Such tax will discourage excessive use of private vehicles, which will:

Improve journey time by taking cars off the road
Shift some traffic from private vehicles to public transport
Reduce carbon emissions

I would think removal of subsidies and introduction of fuel tax alone would provide the government with resources to build its capacity in multiple areas. And of course, in public transport too.

Specific subsidies (however the implementation is) can be provided to a limited number of people based on geographies or industries. I would imagine logistics service providers and other transport operators should have access to fuel subsidies. Small-time farming and fisheries probably should be subsidized too.

Public transport: government to fund rail transport directly

The current state of public transport is deplorable, and part of the problem is that rail service providers are putting financial rather than service performance first. That financial focus is part of the reason city rail policy in the country has become a bit of a real estate play, rather than about moving people around efficiently.

It is time we admit public transport, city rail in this current state especially, are financially nonviable. While admitting so, we must take into account those rail services are a public good.

With these two things in mind, the government should directly fund these rail services, and reform various rail service providers’ key performance indices from financial-based, to primarily performance-based. (Let us not play with paper-shifting accounting anymore and get serious about public transport).

Besides, for all intends and purposes, these services are already funded by the government indirectly through committed guarantees. It is just that too many people are in denial about public transport finances in Malaysia (see the chart below for the 2023 Fiscal Outlook report, which is the result of lasting reporting reforms made in 2018-2020. Observe commitment linked to DanaInfra, Prasarana and Malaysia Rail Link). They hide behind accounting standards to avoid the truth: the government is already funding these rail services through convoluted means.

This however does not mean public transport is free, but it should be cheap enough, particularly with respect to costs of private vehicle ownership.

Which rail services should under this? I am thinking primarily monorail, LRT and MRT in KL.

Public transport: Postpone MRT3 and HSR to later years when ridership demand is more appropriate, and improve existing rail services instead

Given the current state of rail transport usage and efficiency in Kuala Lumpur, I am unconvinced of the need for MRT3 at the moment. I rather wait until the current rail system nears full or even three-fourths capacity before moving ahead with MRT3. At the same time, with the ringgit weakening, it might be a good idea to control government-induced imports: MRT3 and HSR would definitely need large imports that would exacerbate the situation we are in.

I also am not too warm about having new city rail services in other cities. There are very few cities in Malaysia that have enough population to rationalize building a new city rail line.

As for HSR, I rather we strengthen and expand KTMB’s ETS.

For ECRL, it is too late to do anything about it. But I suppose, the long run goal is to integrate it into KTMB. We should streamline such rail service instead of fragmentizing them.

At the same time, improvement in services will require purchases of new assets. This, obviously, has to be done through open tender. No more sweet deal with China-based companies, which has proven to be overpriced in the long-term despite appearing cheap at the outset.

Furthermore, improving existing rail services would be a chance to further develop Malaysia’s industrial capacity, instead of importing from China technology that we already have.

Public transport: More bus services, and bus lanes in the cities

To improve public transport around in cities all around the countries, buses are likely the most cost-effective ways doing it. And it is flexible unlike rail. Focus on buses instead of rail should keep Malaysia’s transport policy from ballooning the way it has (without the associated improved performance) in the past decades.

Two things:

For buses operated by Rapid, the same government-funded model used in rail applies. These are city-buses.
For buses run by private entities, the government to subsidize fares given some service-level requirements. This is likely applicable in small cities, and interstate services, which do not compete with government-provided services. This should also help with rural buses, where low ridership might kill off services.

It is also time to consider dedicated bus lanes on existing roads. Here, we have Jakarta to learn from. More bus lanes will also discourage private car use in the city, by taking lanes away from private vehicles.

Highway: No new highways in the Klang Valley

With the exception of Sabah and Sarawak, and some parts of the East Coast, the Peninsular West Coast probably does not need new highways (particularly so the Klang Valley). So, no need highways in the Klang Valley.

Tolls: Congestion charges in the cities

I prefer to have congestion charges in the cities. This also means no abolition of tolls, or lower of tolls outside of congestion charges model (abolition of toll means the barrier of switching from private vehicles to public transport will be higher and we need to avoid that). The implementation of total congestion charges may have to come with stages and the easiest is probably to wait for all the concession to end and have the government, or the relevant city authorities take it over. This is probably most relevant for KL and its satellites, and possibly George Town too.

For interstate tolled highways, I am ambivalent. We could keep the current system, but refrains from seasonal toll discounts.

Tolls: payment methods

There are too many lanes for different payment methods.

Makes all lanes capable of accepting all payment methods. Also, no express lanes. Everybody should line up and wait for their turns.

Private vehicle ownership/etc

I am going to list down several items without much elaboration:

Doubling (tripling) of excise duties on luxury vehicles for carbon emissions
Banning of large vehicles (i.e. pick-up trucks) for individual uses for carbon emissions and safety concerns
Banning of white headlamps for safety concerns
Cash for clunkers program to address emissions and safety concerns
I am ambivalent about this, but we possibly need ideas on investment for electric vehicle infrastructure.

Aviation

Yes, refunds mean refunding in cash, not in funny credits. This shall be the law.

I have been to a number of cities with superb rail networks before but I hardly took any notice of them. I simply took the convenience that came along with them for granted. I have come to conclude that any good big city will always have a good rail network servicing the city and its suburbs. The fact that a city has one is not something that quickly impresses me anymore.

While I was wandering the streets of Paris, the issue of the planned mass rail transit system in Kuala Lumpur began to dominate Malaysian headlines. Paris is famous for many things and one of those things is its dense rail network called the Metro. With the MRT in mind, I began to compare the Metro to the existing rail network in Kuala Lumpur.

It is probably unfair to make that comparison. The French capital began building its system nearly a century earlier than Kuala Lumpur did. The French had a lot of time to build and to perfect their network while Kuala Lumpur is still building its network. Nevertheless, there are things Kuala Lumpur can learn from Paris.

One of them is definitely how the lines are integrated, given how badly the network in Kuala Lumpur performs in this respect. Prime examples of lack of integration are the monorail line at KL Sentral, the light rail transit stations at Masjid Jamek and the distance between the Bukit Nanas monorail station and the Dang Wangi station on the Kelana Jaya LRT line.

The planned MRT is poised to repeat these past mistakes. One station belonging to the MRT line is not going to be constructed at KL Sentral but somewhere near to the transportation hub of the city. The distance between the hub and the planned MRT station appears to be farther than the distance between the hub and the nearby monorail station.

The need to travel the distance to change trains is an annoyance for commuters but sometimes it is understandably unavoidable. The issue of cost, land ownership or other innocent constraints may prevent perfect integration between lines. In Paris, there are places where one has to walk for a considerable distance to change trains.

The ticketing system in Paris fortunately makes the action less of a chore. Whatever the train line a commuter needs to take, he or she simply needs to buy the ticket once. There is no need to buy a different ticket for a different line. That means there is no need to queue at the counter or machine multiple times. It also means a commuter need not pass through a ticket verification barrier one time too many.

In Kuala Lumpur, different lines have their own tickets. The need to purchase multiple tickets because one needs to change trains causes long queues. Add to that the fact that these machines in Kuala Lumpur tend to accept exact change only, never mind that some of these machines tend to be offline typically; riding the trains can be an extremely stressful experience.

There is of course the Touch ”˜N Go and other cards that partially address the problem of lack of ticket integration across all the intracity lines.

Yet, not everybody can afford to store considerable credit in those cards and even if affordability is not an issue, not everybody wants to use it. Many times, individuals need to ride the intra-city train infrequently. That makes these cards a relatively expensive investment for a person in a country where a lot of individuals earn less than RM2,000 per month.

My suggestion for the new MRT line and together with the LRT network is this: if the intracity lines cannot be integrated physically with verification barriers placed everywhere, at least integrate its ticketing systems. Since the LRT is under Syarikat Prasarana Negara and so too the MRT eventually, surely such an integration will not be too hard to do.

And yes, please make those machines a little bit more flexible in accepting bills.

Mohd Hafiz Noor Shams. Some rights reserved

First published in The Malaysian Insider on March 2 2011.