SEPT 30 — The Penang government which is pushing hard for building more roads claims it is for "moving people” and not for moving cars!

This is far from the truth. Don’t hoodwink Penangites.    

Jams happen during peak hours - when large numbers of people are going to work and returning home.

Standing at a road junction and looking into the cars, you will see that  approximately 7 out of 10 cars have only the driver in them.

Then observe the road space cars take up compared to buses. Two cars take up as much space as one 40-seater bus.

When 28 of these passengers prefer to drive their individual cars (one very good reason being bad public transport that they cannot rely on), leaving only 12 in the bus, who have no means to buy cars, their 28 cars take up the road space of 14 buses.

14 buses, even if carrying only 30 persons each, would be transporting 420 people. If each carries 40, the number would be 560.

Could the Penang state government honestly state whether its grand plan of building more roads is truly a project for moving people and not for moving cars?

A person living in Batu Maung who takes the Rapid 302 bus to the ferry terminal, arrives there in one and a half hours (90 minutes). That journey can be made by a bicyclist in half the time. Now, pray tell, is it not the deplorable public transport  service that drives people to drive their own cars?

Thousands of single occupancy cars are driven to the Bayan Lepas Industrial Zone every working day, and for the whole day they remain parked occupying hundreds of acres of parking space, whether at grade level or in multi-storey car parks.

Why should people going to work be not just bringing along their briefcases, instead of bringing along cars that occupy about 150 square feet each?

To think of it, a low-cost housing unit is only 550 square feet, i.e. the space taken by 4 cars at the most.

There seems to be something unholy about the haste to push the project through. The State government claims it has held briefing sessions for 16,000 people. How many of these are people directly affected by the project, e.g. those living, working, studying in buildings within 200 meters on either side of Gottleib Road, and other areas? Something is very mischievous about this claim if those directly affected were not the ones called for the briefings. Many affected people claim they were unaware of this massive project. 

Further, why are construction and development companies involved at the planning stage? They have a vested interest, i.e. to make money from the construction works and after that from developing land along the new roads and reclaimed areas.. Isn’t this a serious conflict of interest? For them it’s money, money, money.

Planning and decision making should be by people who have no vested interest.

Why is Penang bent on spending billions for the huge number of private vehicles (about 70 percent of driver-only cars) that are the cause of traffic jams during peak hours?? Other progressive cities are moving on to the latest methods of mass  transportation like the trackless trams.

The photo below shows that 2 medium sized cars take up as much space as one bus. This luxury should be strongly discouraged by providing an efficient public transport system, and not encouraged and perpetuated by  building more roads for the driver-only cars during peak hours.