Sustainable Public Transport

Nowadays public transport has become another important part in people live. Public transport, particularly in Malaysia comprises the bus, taxi, train and its big families, aeroplane and also ships. It has become an alternative for people to travel from one place to another. It is also seen as the sustainable ways of travelling as it can accommodate a large number of people at a generally low cost and less carbon footprint compare to the private vehicle.

Public Transport in Kuala Lumpur

Seeing the importance of the public transport to increase the socioeconomic of the urban dwellers, the Government have initiates a key strategy under the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) in 2010 to provide a better public transport facilities not only for the urban but also for the sub-urban people. These are the main community that used the public transport for different used; work, study, play or shopping and all of the people is expecting the Government to improve the public transport service across the country

Public Transport in Seri Iskandar

Seri Iskandar is a newly emerged town in Perak. It is located around 10 kilometres from Bota Kanan, my hometown. The increasing population due to the rapid development has made this town as the town with huge potential to be developed in the future. With the current population of 16,000 plus with the huge numbers of student from the UiTM Seri Iskandar and Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), there is an urge for the better public transport, but the current situation? Worst.

Welcome to Seri Iskandar

The current public transport services is provided by the bus and taxi. The public bus however are operated indepently by 3 major provider; the General Omnibus, Perak Transit and MaraLiner. Only Maraliner serve across the district of Perak Tengah, which mean it travel form one point to another point within the district. Meanwhile, the other two only serve Seri Iskandar as their ‘stop by’ point on their way from Ipoh to Lumut and vice versa. The taxi service however very poor as you hardly can find any taxi on the streets, and the fares are very high even for just a few kilometres.

Perak Transit that serve the Seri Iskandar residents

Then there is become a problem. With such a massive development currently being construct, plus with the huge population (16,000 + 15,000 IPT student) one would expect the public transportation service would never been this worst. Take an example of the public bus service. Even though there are many public bus available from Ipoh to Lumut, but there is no single public bus service that serve the route within the town of Seri Iskandar. The reason from the officials are clear : there is no demand for such thing.

Yes the DEMAND is the main reason for any company to do their service. The same logic happens for the public bus company. Nobody wants to do a loss business. In the capitalism theory, the profit is the main reason for everybody to do business. Now that what I call as the evil in the economic system. You just focused on the good benefits for the economic side only without considering the effect to the people and the environment. How can we call that as the sustainability?

Seri Iskandar in next 20 years? Hopefully!

In order to urge the people to use the public transport, we must create the demand. This can be done by simply make the public bus serve the roads in the suburban or in the housing area continually. At the long time, people will notice that the public bus service is available at their location and there is no reason for them to depend on their car or motorcycles. This is a psychological war, when we create something that people might think it is available. Eventually, the demand is there as more and more people would notice the availability of the public bus service in their area.

Yes, it would not be profitable business in the early stages. But when it comes to provide a better service for the people than noting would stop this. In my opinion, even though this theory seems radical or ‘tidak masuk akal’ but I believe this is the best alternative to make people use the public transport rather than use the conventional ways such as petrol increase, toll payment and parking charged for the private vehicles which might give little impact to them to use the public transport. In the end, this does not apply in the context of Seri Iskandar, but also for the whole Malaysia if not the whole world if we want to make people use the public transport. =)

“by using the public transport, doesn't necessary it indicates you a poor person”