PJ City Bus is the first free bus introduced in Selangor state and the first to be initiated by a local council. It started operation on May 15, 2014 and gained a good response from the public especially Petaling Jaya residents. It hits average ridership of 9,000 per day.

The Urban Transportation Division (the first division created in Selangor local councils) of the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) has carried out a study on the impact of PJ City Bus on reduction of private vehicle users. The study was conducted from Sept 14 till 18, 2015. Based on the Krejcie & Morgan (1970), 400 passengers had been interviewed.

The study found 19 percent of the users of PJ City bus are formerly private vehicle users (car and motorcycle). This is very positive news to us in MBPJ as one of the main objectives for the PJ Free Bus is to create awareness of public transport usage and further improve the mobility of PJ residents in the city.

Another objective of PJ City Bus is to relieve the financial burden of PJ residents on transportation. From the study, 86 percent of them are working class and students. Ninety-three percent of them are Malaysians and 80 percent of the passengers are frequent users of PJ City Bus.

There is room to improve especially waiting time. Currently, 45 percent of them wait for less than 15 minutes and 47 percent waited for 16-30 minutes. Our target is 15 minutes of waiting time. In order to improve this is, there will be an increase in the number of buses, which MBPJ has included in its 2016 budget.

I have proposed to the Full Board Council meeting yesterday that all bus stops for current and future PJ City Bus routes must be audited immediately in terms of accessibility for pedestrians/ cyclists within a 400m radius. Upon establishing the good accessibility of the bus stops, ridership of the PJ City Bus will improve tremendously and hence, there will be less private vehicles on the road.

The success of PJ City Bus depends on a change of the mode of transportation from private vehicles to public transport. MBPJ encourages all PJ residents to use the PJ City Bus as their mode of transportation within the city. Let’s move people and not move vehicles!

IR LEE SUET SEN is a councillor of MBPJ and chairperson of the PJ Master Transportation Plan.