Some 80 civil society members attended the National Public Transport Forum yesterday to air their grouses and propose solutions to Malaysia's public transport woes.

National Public Transport Forum Also in attendance were a group of Land Public Transport Commission (Spad) officials led by policy, planning, and research chief Prodyut Dutt, who pledged to take suggestions at the forum into account when finalising the National Land Transport Master Plan .

The plan is currently open for public feedback with no deadline being set.

Among the ideas mooted by participants include providing sensitivity training for public transport operators to help them deal with disabled passengers and to provide a sufficiently fast Internet connection to allow office workers to work from home instead of commuting.

National Public Transport Forum participant Richard Foo One participant also suggested that Spad should delegate the implementation of its policies to local councils instead of having it done centrally.

"It is wrong for public transport to be controlled centrally. You can do policies centrally, but you must share the money locally," said participant Robert Foo ( photo above ) when reporting the conclusions of his brainstorming group.

Only 17% use public transport

The day-long forum was organised by the Working Group on Public Transportation in Malaysia, which consists of Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) and NGOs Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall, Centre for Environment, Technology and Development Malaysia (Cetdem) and several others.

Spad Policy, Planning and Research Division deputy general manager Nor Fanim Mohd Ami It kicked off with Spad's policy, planning, and research deputy general manager Nor Fanim Mohd Ami ( right ) giving a presentation on its master plan, which among objectives aims to boost public transport use in urban areas to 40 percent of all trips.

This is compared to 37 percent for the Greater Kuala Lumpur region in 1985, and down to 17 percent in 2010 when Spad was established, according to statistics provided by Fanim later during the brainstorming workshop on the consequences of the national car policy.

Some of the measures proposed in the master plan include supporting safety initiatives for passengers travelling to public transport hubs from home or work, and enforcing minimum standards on reliability.

Also making presentations were Sungai Siput MP Dr Jeyakumar Devaraj, Cetdem chairperson Gurmit Singh, and several town planners from the Petaling Jaya City Council, Penang City Council and the Housing Ministry.