Fomca: Revive BRT project

PETALING JAYA: The Kuala Lumpur-Klang Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project should be revived to promote public transport, says Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) senior vice-president Datuk K. Koris Atan.

He said the project, under the previous government, which was shelved in 2017, could pave the way for other BRT projects in other parts of Malaysia.

Rather than spending huge sums on acquiring and building rail lines, he said it would be cheaper to convert two Federal Highway lanes to dedicated bus lanes.

“You already have specific lanes on roads such as Jalan Syed Putra, with set times where only buses can go on them. But if you observe, drivers don’t care and enter the lanes, thus slowing down traffic,” Koris said.

The government recently announced a freeze in toll hikes for 21 highways in 2019, which will cost the government almost RM1bil in compensation.

With elevated, dedicated bus lanes, he added, more people could board and get to their destinations quicker, and not be hampered by single or low-occupancy cars on the normal lanes. Instituting dedicated BRT lanes, he said, would mean also having to improve the last mile connectivity with shuttle buses or cars for hire.

He pointed to the Jakarta-Bandung line and several cities in Brazil which had implemented their own BRT systems.

“This is a social responsibility aspect that the government needs to look into. You also need to think about what benefits the greatest number of users,” he said.