This is an open letter in reply to Dr Dorina Pojani’s opinion that the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) would work better for Penang.

Dear Dr Pojani,

First of all, I would like to say that I have the utmost respect for yourself as an academic and I am sure you are more than qualified to comment on issues regarding transportation. I read with great interest on your talk that was recently held in Penang on Sept 23, 2016 on the Light Rail Transit (LRT) system and how you felt that the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system would work better than the LRT. However, I would like to share my opinions on the matter that might differ from your own.

Penang, as you might already know, has the Unesco World Heritage Status within the George Town area due to its colonial past. Now even outside the Unesco Heritage Zone, space has always been an issue due to old building plans of years gone by.

You said that some South American cities had already implemented the BRT and it has worked for them. But remember, some South American cities were built with public transportation already planned from the beginning; hence the roads are already wide to begin with. Every city was conceived and constructed differently during the less connected eras of the past.

Now as a Penangite who has lived his whole life in Penang, I have only seen roads as big as highways perhaps but never within the city. Now in order to achieve what you are suggesting, it can be estimated that massive land acquisitions and reduced road capacity will have to take place which would mean that costs would shoot up instantly (not as straight forward is it?).

If land acquisition is not carried out, there will definitely be traffic conflicts and the need to realign junctions which would result in ridership discomfort & capacity issues as travel demand increases along with the risk of accidents.

You see, even if land acquisition is carried out, a lot of the land next to existing roads has buildings which would mean the additional costs of acquiring and even demolishing buildings and I am pretty sure that this is not an avenue which is feasible at all.

Some questions

Overall, my concerns can be summed up with the following questions:

1) Have you studied the transport landscape on Penang Island and completely understood the underlying challenges? Please do share your studies as well as your findings with us with regard to feasibility of the BRT on Penang Island.

2) To install road-based BRT, does George Town have enough road space to afford to close the minimum of two traffic lanes?

3) In coming years, can the BRT be upgraded further to cater to rising travel demand from suburban areas with fast-paced urbanisation - in terms of expanding the number of lanes for dedicated BRT lane? How do we expand the BRT in the future with Penang’s narrow roads/flyovers with only two to four lanes?

4) Will Penangites accept the negative social costs in implementing the BRT system - land acquisitions, a revamped road network, reduced road capacity, traffic congestions, etc?

Everyone can tell that with a significantly reduced road capacity for dedicated BRT right-of-way, traffic congestions will be worse.

5) Are Penangites ready to accept BRT as the primary form of public transport? The programme will fail and be no different from the current bus system already existing in Penang should enforcement by the traffic police on cars misusing the dedicated bus lanes not be sufficient.

6) What is the funding/ business model for the BRT?

You see, the subject of your talk the other day was ‘Urban Transport Crisis in Small and Medium Size Developing Cities and the Effectiveness of Countermeasures’. The key words in the title are ‘developing cities’. Yes, Penang is developing and is aiming to become an international city and so in order to develop; we need to retain our human capital.

That’s right, we need to retain our talents and we are facing massive competition from emerging and established economies throughout the world for our talents and should we fail to provide an economy that is capable of supporting our talents and their families, our competing economies will gain.

The Penang state government has the lives of 1.7 million Penangites to account for. The costs of failure will be the fall of our economy as transportation of both people and products rely on its efficiency for our economy to survive. Asking Penangites to give up their private vehicles must be backed up by a feasible and well-studied transportation system.

Overall, one cannot just simply experiment on a transportation plan for Penang as there are catastrophic consequences for Penang’s future should the plan fail. And at the end of the day, who is going to take responsibility should the experiment fail?

As you can see, failure is not an option and competition for human capital is very real.

CHRIS LEE CHUN KIT is a city councillor with the Penang Island City Council (Majlis Bandaraya Pulau Pinang) representing the DAP.