Out of nowhere, another high-rise building will soon appear in Desa Aman Puri, a housing estate in Selayang which is already heavily congested with traffic every morning.

 

Once completed, the new condominium will add a few hundred more vehicles on a shared exit with residents of Bandar Sri Damansara.

 

Meanwhile, the section before the Damansara toll on the Damansara-Puchong Highway is now congested every morning, especially after the completion of projects such as Desa Park City.

 

In a year’s time, the multi-storey office buildings in that area developed by MK Land will also add to the traffic congestion.

 

There appears to be no limit to condominium and office blocks, where the city and local councils are concerned.

 

I dread to think that residents will have to leave their homes much earlier in order to avoid the morning rush hours, if they want to get to their offices on time.

 

They will not be able to get home until at least eight o’clock at night due to worsening traffic congestion.

 

The big blame

 

A lot of our current situation is to blamed on the the town and country planning authority.

For example, in Aman Puri, the Selayang Municipal Council did not take into into consideration that there are already at least 15 high-rise buildings in three housing projects – Taman KIP, Wangsa Permai, and Aman Puri.

 

I wonder if the town planner has even undertaken any study on the population density of the area, before he approved the project. Queries to his mobile phone have gone unanswered.

 

In the past, town planners get away with the responsibility. However, with the new state government, it is time for the Selangor state exco members to haul up the respective directors concerned who approved the project to explain whether there are plans for new exit roads to reduce the traffic congestion in these areas.

 

Was there any corruption involved? Why was the project approved without proper planning for more roads to be constructed to disperse the traffic during peak hours?

Are they any other projects being approved right now, which has not taken into consideration all the major concerns of existing residents?

 

Same in Mont Kiara and elsewhere

 

What is happening in Aman Puri is also happening elsewhere. In fact, there is no difference between a posh area and the rural village next to it in the way how new housing projects are being planned.

 

Mont Kiara, for example, is under the jurisdiction of the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL). Despite being a posh township with luxury condominiums, the population density is high, and the road infrastructure is far from being able to cope with the traffic during the peak hours.

 

The condition of the roads – with potholes and uneven surfaces – do not reflect the upmarket properties in Mont Kiara. This is despite property owners having forked out millions for their piece of real estate.

 

During peak hours, the traffic jam gets worse when children are being dropped or picked up from Garden International School. Cars are double parked along the entire stretch of the busy road the school is on, when chauffeurs wait to pick up the kids after the bell rings.

 

How on earth could DBKL approve the site for a school, when the road serving it is in fact a major connecting road? After creating the problem, City Hall enforcement officers are nowhere to be seen managing the traffic during peak hours.

 

Those who are living in another posh area like Tropicana Country & Golf Resort will say there is no difference.

 

A relative,who lives there says that she, too, has to spend at least 45 minutes every morning just to get out of the area. The bottleneck is a one-lane and one-way street near Hi-Tech Park in Bandar Utama and the school located just opposite the Riana Green Condominium.

 

For an expensive area in Petaling Jaya, there are only two exits which are mainly one-way streets. There is no wonder that during peak hours, the residents are caught in a bad traffic jam. Where is the logic?

 

Poor planning

 

This weekend, affected residents of Petaling Jaya, Selangor, will be staging a demonstration against the Kinrara-Damansara Expressway (Kidex) project approved by both the federal and state governments.

 

For a city that is hardly five million people, we have reached the stage where we have to create skyways costing perhaps billions of ringgit to reduce the traffic congestion. Why?

 

What is saddest still is that the houses of those people affected by the project would be repossessed for the project.

 

In some cases, the property owners have lived in the area for many years and have become part of the eco-system. Now, they face the prospect of having to relocate elsewhere, far away from where the basic facilities are.

 

This is one major headache that Selangor Menteri Besar (MB) Azmin Ali will have to deal with, especially when he has to meet the people face-to-face. I dread to think how the new MB will have to face the brunt for the ‘mistake’ that his predecessor has made in approving the skyway.

 

Azmin will certainly not be allowed to blame the mistake on former menteri besar Khalid Ibrahim. The entire burden, which is the result of poor town planning right from the start, will now fall on his lap.

 

There is just ‘this much’ that an MB can do, but if he does not cooperate with the people, the Pakatan-led state government may risk losing in the next general election.

 

The best he can do is to write to the federal government that the rakyat do not want the Kidex Skyway, and to use other avenues available to block the project.

 

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak or any of his cabinet ministers will unlikely appear to deal with the people’s grouses, although the Kidex project was initiated as a federal project, and Najib can ask the Malaysian Highway Authority to abandon pursuing the skyway construction.

 

Developed nation status

 

It has been said that Malaysia is becoming a developed nation by 2020, but the Third World mindset still characterises most of our civil servants.

 

World class? What world class? A friend of mine calls Kuala Lumpur a “slum” city. Except for certain parts of the urbanscape in which roads are properly maintained, most of the Federal Territory still look like a modern slum.

 

For example, the same slum road that runs through Kampung Segambut Dalam and Kampung Kayu Ara is servicing the plush condominiums in Mont Kiara and Tropicana.

 

Roads are riddled with potholes and a huge sum of money is spent on resurfacing these roads only to find that the next day, the same potholes appear again. This is because many of the roads do not even have proper drainage systems.

 

Only in the past one year, we have seen upgrading work being carried out in Selangor to improve the public amenities. This is money well-spent but it will take several years before we can truly see our public amenities reaching a standard we can be proud of.

 

Currently, as it is, unless there is a new mindset in the civil service, we can continue to dream living in a world-class city.

Part 1: Strata title still an issue for many apartments