Traffic Control

I heard in the news recently that the traffic situation in KL is getting worse. But this is not the first time it is being mentioned. It seems that the follow through mechanism in the civil service just does not work or more likely, does not exist. Some of the solutions, such as the dual purpose tunnel, are very impressive, but it serves to treat the consequences of the root cause rather than contending with the root cause itself.

And what is the root cause? Well, there are simply too many vehicles on the road. You can't blame people for having vehicles and for using them. It is their right, after all, in a free country. However, if they had reliable, comfortable and reasonably priced alternatives, I'm sure the wise people of KL would choose to public transport instead of being stuck in traffic for hours and facing the horrors of poor driving practices on KL roads (what causes this is a subject that deserves a dedicated discussion).

Rather than just charging flatly for all vehicles, there could always be a discount for non single occupant vehicles. This would encourage people to pool cars. In fact the concept of pool cars has not at all been exploited to its true potential. Every office management could play a part in this by setting up car pool committees to arrange for the pick up and send off of staff coming from the same general location. In fact each building could have a car pool committee for maximum impact. The government could incentivise this effort by rewarding the most effective groups with fuel subsidies etc.

This is one of many ideas that can be rolled out in cities like KL where having more roads and parking is simply not an option.