Good
morning, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Introduction and Context
Thank
you for that introduction Cik Yusnaida.
Actually
I am here to speak on behalf of SPAD. I appreciate the opportunity afforded to
me to share my thoughts and experience after being six years in the
organisation. I believe all of you present this morning believe public
transportation is vital to the future of our people and country.
When
speaking about public transport, our mission is really not about public
transportation. Really it’s about people, it’s about employment, it’s about
quality of our lives and quality of our environment.
Since
public transport is about those things I mentioned, and more; in a time of
tough fiscal choices, we can say it is a wise investment in our future. During
on uncertain economic period it is a journey to prosperity. Amid the rising
concern about global warming in Malaysia we are feeling its consequent too.
It’s a source of cleaner air.
Above
all, public transport is an investment for a better of life, less irritating
times stuck in traffic, more places for families to be together and more time
to do so.
With
all those benefits, public transport is on the rise. Public transport costs
money upfront but yields a profit at the end of it. Public transport is also a
critical building block for economic development.
I
am sure that many of you especially the transport professionals and students have
heard that the modal share of public transport is about 20% in Kuala Lumpur,
15% in Johor Bharu, 11% in Penang and so on. However we must not lose sight of
the fact that these bland percentages actually represent real-life people. It
means that everyday in Malaysia, a total of 1.3 million passengers make a
journey using the bus, the LRT, the KTM or the monorail.
So
when we talk of transforming public transport, we are actually talking about
how we can improve the lives of these 1.3 million of our fellow citizens. When
we talk of increasing modal share, we are talking of improving the lives of
more of our fellow citizens, – all things being equal public transport is the
best and cheapest form of transport for each and everyone of us. But here is
the root of the problem – all things are NOT equal. Too often, we have
unreliable services, we have first-mile last-mile connectivity issues, and we
have issues regarding integration between different modes and services. In fact,
we have a whole lot of issues that make public transport not the first choice
but the second choice and sometimes even the last resort of the people. This is
something that the public is very aware of as they experience it first-hand. In
fact I would say that public transport is one area where the public is as
knowledgeable as the professionals when it comes to how the system is
performing on the ground. Professionals may say that the capacity on average is
sufficient but try telling that to someone who cannot get into a bus or a train
because it is too crowded. Who do you believe? I know who I will believe.
We
also have to keep in mind that in transforming public transport, we are not
starting from a blank slate. There is in fact an existing well-entrenched
system that both operators and people are familiar with. Any attempt to change
will necessarily have to take into account the existing system to minimize if
not avoid totally any disruption as we attempt to make the journey from where
we are to where we want to go. So it is useful for us to reflect on this
reality, to understand how we came to this state of affairs before we can talk
of our aspirations and challenges.
Evolution of the Public Transport
Operating
System and Regulatory
Framework
Historically,
the public transport system started as a private sector initiative using buses.
The passenger bus industry relied on the farebox revenue model whereby
operating costs and investment returns are meant to be covered from passenger
fares. There was cross-subsidization within the company level. Lucrative routes
cross-subsidized loss-making routes. This model worked fine as long as the
number of lucrative routes exceeded the number of loss-making routes. However as
the city expanded, route expansion did not keep pace with the increase in
urbanization because by definition the new areas were less populated and thus
loss-making.
The
result was that the PT network served an increasingly smaller proportion of the
urban area. Increasing affluence resulted in high rates of private vehicle
ownership and taking into account the relatively less dense coverage by public transport,
resulted in greater use of private vehicles and less usage of public transport.
Bus operators reacted by cutting unprofitable routes, or reducing frequencies
along routes, the net effect being further reduction in service followed by
further reduction in patronage, putting the industry in a classic case of a
vicious downward spiral. Thus rational decisions taken by individual actors led
to an overall irrational suboptimal outcome.
The
increasing marginalization of public transport means that local authorities became
extremely reluctant to take measures that can assist public transport , such as
parking restrictions or bus priority in traffic, which further reduces the
attractiveness of PT. Local authorities frequently stated that they cannot take
traffic management measures until public transport becomes a viable alternative creating a
chicken-and-egg situation. With public transport commuters mostly coming from
the economically disadvantaged groups, the Government has also found it
difficult to increase bus fares further adding to the problems of the industry.
With
the failure of the farebox model, it became obvious that the laissez-faire
model of regulation practised in the early days of the industry was not tenable.
The Government reacted by creating new regulatory structures i.e. the
Commercial Vehicles Licencing Board (CVLB) to take over the licensing functions
previously handled by the Road Transport Department for road-based public
transport and the Department of Railways for rail-based public transport.
However these new organizations were on top of the existing organizations.
Hence at one time there were 13 government agencies who had some form on role
in the public transport arena. You can imagine the problems of ensuring
coordination and coherence of policy and implementation.
In
2010 the planning and regulatory structure for public transport was streamlined
with the formation of the Suruhanjaya Pengangkutan Awam
Darat
(SPAD) to replace the Commercial Vehicles Licensing Board and the Department of
Railways in Peninsular Malaysia. This, for the first time, brought under one
organization both the planning of public transport networks and operations with
the licensing functions of public transport operators and vehicles. It also
integrated the planning of road-based public transport modes with rail-based
public transport systems. There was a reason why a Commission structure was
adopted instead of a standard government Department of Public Transport. One
was to inculcate greater professionalism and continuity in the staff as
previously staff at LPKP and DOR were transferred every few years. Another was
to allow a greater measure of professional independence. However I must point
out that this is not absolute independence as we are still a Government agency
and we are still bound by Cabinet decisions and directives. In fact our Act
expressly allows the Minister to give directions to the Commission.
The
formation of SPAD does not mean that integration in public transport has been
fully achieved. For example while planning and licencing of bus routes is the
responsibility of SPAD, the approval of drivers’ public service vehicle
licences and indeed of the buses themselves are under the purview of the Road
Transport Department.
While
not as well known, similar situation of fragmented responsibility exists in the
rail sector as well. We have three bodies The existing governance structure
dates back to 1992 with the implementation of the Railways Act 1991. In
accordance with this Act, Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM) was corporatized as
Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd. (KTMB), fully owned by the Minister of Finance,
Inc., the Department of Railways (DOR) was established to ensure and promote
safe, efficient and affordable railway transport system in Malaysia i.e. the
planning and regulatory role, while the Railway Assets Corporation (RAC) was
established to carry out the
management of all assets and liabilities which is owned and liable by KTM
including railway lands. Both the DOR and
RAC were placed under the Ministry of Transport and thus a single agency was
ultimately responsible for both infrastructure development and service
planning.
However,
in 2010, with the coming into force of the Land Public Transport Act 2010, and
the repeal of the Railways Act insofar as Peninsular Malaysia is concerned,
DOR’s role and staff for Peninsular Malaysia was subsumed into SPAD and with it
the planning and regulatory role was also transferred to SPAD which is under
the Prime Minister’s Department. So now there is a situation where the operator
of commuter and inter-city services (KTMB) reports to the Ministry of Finance,
the planning and regulatory role is under the Prime Minister’s Department
through SPAD while the infrastructure development role remained with the
Ministry of Transport through RAC. This is just one of the legacy issues that I
mentioned earlier
Issues
and Challenges
(i)
Increasing Vehicle Ownership
One
of the main reasons is of course the high rate of private vehicle ownership.
According to a World Bank study published in June 2015, Malaysia today is among
the countries in the world with the highest incidence of car ownership. This
study used 2011 data and it showed that outside of Eastern Europe, among all
the middle-income countries in the world, Malaysia had the highest rate of car
ownership. This is just car ownership. It does not include motorcycle
ownership. I am sure that if the World Bank included motorcycle ownership,
Malaysia would have highest rate of private vehicle ownership among all the
middle-income countries in the world, bar none.
Road
Transport Department statistics show that between 1997 and 2012, the number of
private vehicles registered increased from 8.5 million to 22.7 million. This
average annual growth rate of 6.7% is three times the population growth rate of
2% and 1.6 times the growth rate of the economy as a whole which was 4.2%.
While in many countries increased car ownership does not automatically
translate into increased car usage, in Malaysia it does. Based on surveys
conducted by MIROS, the vehicle-km driven in Malaysia during the period 1997 –
2012 increased at an average annual rate of 7.0%, higher even than the 6.7%
increase in vehicle ownership. So in Malaysia once a person has a car or a
motorcycle, he or she stops using the bus.
(ii)
Integration of Land Use
Planning and Public Transport Planning
An
analysis of the land use pattern of Malaysian cities shows that Malaysian
cities are sprawling cities and as they increase in population, the urban
sprawl seems to increase. Take Greater KL for example. In Dec 1990, the
population of Greater KL was 3.08 million and the urban land area was 621 sq.
km. In Dec 1999, population increased to 5.97 million and the built up area
increased to 1,555 sq. km. In other words a population increase of 3.55% led to
a built-up area increase of 7.92% or more than double the population increase.
Hence the urban density is actually decreasing as the population is increasing.
The same pattern is being repeated in other cities such as Penang and Johor
Bahru. In fact a 2011 World Bank report stated that of the 15 developing
countries in their East Asian and Pacific region, Malaysia had the 4th largest built-up
land mass. Please keep in mind that this region covers China, South Korea,
Vietnam, Indonesia and many other countries with much higher population than
Malaysia.
The
need to integrate land use planning and public transport planning is the holy
grail of urban transport professionals everywhere. Yet, in the Malaysian
context this has proved extraordinarily difficult to implement in practice.
Again there are two main factors which hinder such integration, namely
institutional and methodological.
The
institutional responsibility for land use planning rests with local authorities
in the respective states. As the key officials in local authorities are
appointed by the respective state governments, it can be seen that land use
planning is within the purview and jurisdiction of the state and local
governments. Public transport planning on the other hand is the responsibility
of SPAD. Hence there is a need to institutionalize cooperation between SPAD and
the state/local governments to ensure that better coordination can be achieved
in practice.
A
start in this institutionalization process was the decision of the National
Physical Planning Council in July 2012 to form State-level
Public Transport Technical Coordinating Committees in each state in
Peninsular Malaysia. Pursuant to this decision, such committees have been
formed in all 11 states in Peninsular Malaysia. The Director, State Economic
Planning Unit chairs the committee while SPAD acts as the secretariat. While
these Committees do not have executive power. They nevertheless help to
sensitize state and local government officials on the need to consider public
transport issues in their normal work. An encouraging case in point is the
decision of the Johor State Government to have public transport plans prepared
for each local authority.
A
starting point for the development of common methodologies for coordinating
land use planning with public transport planning is transit-oriented
development (TOD). TOD in Malaysia is in its infancy but its importance in both
land use planning and public transport planning has been recognized. The 2nd National
Physical Plan (NPP2) stated that TOD concept will be promoted as the basis of
urban planning to ensure viability of public transportation. TOD has also been
identified as one key action plan in the NLPTMP in supporting the achievement
of 40% modal share by 2030. SPAD has developed planning guidelines aspects of
TOD. These guidelines also consider the implications for public transport
planning and service provision. The methodologies proposed in the guidelines
can also be adapted to plan for better coordination between land use
development and public transport service provision on a corridor basis.
(iii) Better
Coordination between Public Transport Planning and Highway/Road
Construction Planning
Road
and highway construction have an obvious impact on public transport usage.
Sometimes the impact is positive for public transport since buses need the road
network to serve origins and destinations effectively. New road/highway
construction can also help facilitate the introduction of new public transport
services such the bus rapid transit (BRT) services. At other times, the impact
is negative since by providing better travelling conditions for private
vehicles, they act as a further barrier to greater usage on public transport.
Hence there needs to be better coordination between public transport planning
and highway/road construction planning. The current level of coordination
between these two key aspects of overall transport planning is lacking and needs
to be improved. There are two main factors hindering such coordinated planning.
The first is institutional in nature while the second is methodological in
nature.
On
the institutional side, highway/road construction planning is the
responsibility of the Ministry of Works and its agencies such as the Public
Works Department and the Malaysia Highway Authority. On the public transport
side, SPAD is the lead agency for public transport planning. Each of these
agencies has its institutional focus/bias and thus cannot act as the lead
agency for coordinated transport planning. Furthermore more, in the case of
SPAD, its legal remit is clear in restricting it to public transport only.
The
methodological barrier to better coordination arises from the fact that the two
transport modes use different planning methodologies. In simplifying matters,
highway planning focuses on the level of service for vehicles on a particular
road with the passenger car unit as the unit of analysis. Public transport
planning on the other hand focuses on ridership with cost-effectiveness per
passenger as the unit of analysis. Because of the differing methodologies it is
difficult to develop a common appraisal methodology to assess alternatives
between road and public transport proposals. It is therefore necessary to
develop a common appraisal method which can be translated into comparable
methodologies for both road and public transport planning and appraisal. Considering
that the purpose of transport networks whether highway/road or public transport
is to provide mobility for people, the unit of analysis for the common
appraisal methodology should be the efficiency of the proposed solution to move
people taking into account cost, fuel usage and emissions.
(iv) First-Mile
and Last-Mile Connectivity
Feeder
transport is a key component of any public transport system. This is because it
serves local areas and brings passengers to nearby transfer/interchange points
where passengers can board trunk services. This is especially critical for
urban rail services which are the backbone of the public transport system in
the Greater KL/Klang Valley region. Spot checks conducted by SPAD reveal that
feeder services suffer from several deficiencies. Some feeder buses took a very
long time to reach their destination. For example the feeder bus from Sri
Rampai LRT station to Lebuh Ampang took 45 mins in one direction and 60 mins in
the reverse direction to cover a distance of only 12.5 km.
A
second problem was the waiting time for feeder buses at LRT stations varied
from 20 mins to 30 mins. The long waiting times are due to the low number of
buses operating on feeder routes. In many cases the waiting times for feeder
bus services was longer than the journey time. For example for the feeder bus
T416 for the Serdang KTM Kommuter station, the waiting time was 40 mins for a
journey time of 26 mins in one direction and waiting time of 60 mins for a
journey time of 40 mins in the reverse direction. The end result of such
excessive waiting and travelling times adds to the overall door-to-door travel
times. All this travelling and waiting times do not include the last-mile
journey from the feeder bus stops which would normally be done walking.
The
2013 GKL Travel Study carried out some comparative analysis of door-to-door
travelling times during the morning peak by urban rail and by private cars. It
showed that on average the total time for a rail journey was 1.76 times longer
than the same journey by private car. The main factor contributing to the long
journey times is the time taken to travel from home to the rail station.
Generally, morning peak users walk from the rail station to their destination.
So the main problem is actually the first-mile connectivity i.e. from the home
to the railway station.
This
problem arises from the housing land use pattern in Malaysia where the norm for
housing estates is link or terrace houses spread out for a relatively large
area rather than high-density condominium or dense housing as is the case in
Singapore or Hong Kong. For high density housing, feeder buses perform
relatively well because the feeder routes can be relatively short and direct
and the feeder bus stations can be placed close to the housing estates. When
houses are spread out, these operational advantages of feeder buses are lost.
To provide access to as many houses as possible, feeder routes are to be
relatively long and meandering. This results in relatively long feeder bus
journey times. The alternatively of having multiple feeder routes is not
practiced because buses, having relatively high capital costs need to be
utilized for about 250 km per day to be efficient. Hence the number of buses
that are deployed on feeder services is not sufficient to keep headways
reasonable.
The
solution for feeder services in the Malaysian context thus cannot be the
conventional bus. We need to use vehicles that have lower capital and
operational costs so that a larger number of feeder services could be provided
within a particular housing area. This would enable shorter journey times,
shorter waiting times and reduced walking distance to feeder service stands.
Consequence of Low Public
Transport Modal Share
This
low modal share of public transport has its consequences on the social and
economic life of the country. The most obvious is traffic congestion. The
Ministry of Works stated that 38% of all Federal roads in the country many of
which provide access to urban centres are either severely congested or
extremely congested. The situation is especially bad in the Greater Kuala
Lumpur region, but it is getting bad even in other cities. No one, I know, not
even the most committed car aficionado, likes sitting in the traffic jam. And
yet this is what the reality is for many people. Surveys show that in GKL, on
average residents commute 29km/hr slower in the morning peak than in the
off-peak. In the evening peak, it is 20 km/hr slower. It is therefore no
surprise that in a survey of global mobility carried out by a consultant firm,
41% of Malaysians stated that road congestion as their highest source of
frustration, higher than the Asia-Pacific average of 35% and the global average
of 29%. Thus congestion, due to the high use of private vehicles, has a major
adverse impact of the social well-being of Malaysians.
Equally
important is the economic cost to the country resulting from this high reliance
on private cars. This cost arises from various factors, the time cost of delays
in journey times, the cost of additional fuel burnt because of the stop-go
nature of travelling in traffic jams, and the cost of additional carbon and
other emissions. The World Bank did a first-line estimate of the costs of
congestion for the economy. It found that time delays cost the Malaysian
economy anywhere between RM10 – 19 billion a year, fuel costs about RM0.9 – 2.4
billion, and pollution costs when monetized cost RM0.9 – 2.7 billion annually.
The total costs of congestion therefore were between RM12.7 – 24.7 billion a
year. This means that the predominant reliance on private vehicles was costing
the Malaysian economy anywhere from 1.1% - 2.2% of our Gross Domestic Product.
Some
of you might think that this loss to the economy is just a notional cost, just
a theoretical cost. So let me use another measure, this time a financial
measure, to show the costs of our individual modal choice of relying on private
vehicles. A 2012 survey showed that transport costs accounted for slightly over
8% of household expenditure in Seoul, slightly less than 8% for a household in
Shanghai, and only 4% of household expenditure for a household in Tokyo and
Hong Kong. The corresponding figure for a household in Kuala Lumpur was 10%,
and this was the same for households in other cities like Georgetown, Kuching,
Kota Kinabalu, Kuantan and Johor Bahru. So Malaysian households are
proportionately spending a much higher percentage of their monthly income on
transport than cities where the modal share of public transport is high. This,
ladies and gentlemen is the cost of our love affair with our cars.
THE WAY FORWARD
Clearly
the way forward is self-evident. If we are serious about people-centric
mobility for social and economic development, we need to find a way to fulfil
human needs in a sustainable manner enabling those needs to be met
indefinitely. Conceptually it has three main dimensions – social, economic and
environmental. In social terms, mobility is a basic necessity of contemporary
life and we cannot hope to restrict mobility without having adverse impacts for
individuals access to important services. In economic terms, we simply cannot
afford to go on building more roads to try to satisfy mobility demands through
private vehicles, since the more the demand the higher the costs of trying to
do so. This is the key difference between the two options to satisfy increasing
demands. If we choose the private vehicle option, we have to keep on building
more highways, more roads and more interchanges. Even if it were possible to do
so, the unit costs would only keep rising. However, since transit is a shared
service, it benefits from the economics of agglomeration resulting from high
densities and from economies of scale arising from high demand. So the higher
the demand for public transport, the lower the unit costs to provide them. In
environmental terms, again the advantages of public transport in terms of lower
emissions per user is compelling.
Hence
people-centric mobility means that we have to achieve a new balance between the
personal and the collective, between private vehicles and public transport. We
cannot continue to be in a situation where the share of public transport
remains in single digits for the vast majorities of our cities. That is why the
National Land Public Transport Master Plan has as its target a 40% modal share
for public transport in all urban areas. Achieving this target will require
tremendous efforts at a policy level, at a governmental level. This is because
the root cause of the problem, is urban sprawl which is a classic case of
market failure, although not often documented as such.
Policy
makers in Malaysia currently have two major policy tools to guide the pattern
of urban development. The first is transport infrastructure and service provision
investment policy. If we want to foster a compact urban form, then our
transport investment has to necessarily give priority to public transport
investment. If we instead give priority to building roads in the name of
connectivity and relieving congestion and leave public transport until later,
then we can be sure that the city urban form will be shaped by private vehicle
use and the task of installing public transport and changing travel behaviour
will be more difficult.
In
many respects, decision-makers accept the case for rail-based public transport.
Hence the tremendous investment in urban rail systems in the Greater Kuala
Lumpur region over RM70 billion in committed expenditure. Even for service
provision, the Government either directly or indirectly, is subsidizing all
rail-based public transport, at an average of 34% of the fares. Even with the
recent fare increases, the operators will not get enough fare revenue to cover
their operating costs and thus have to rely on Government subsidies.
But
what about other cities, especially cities that have not yet reached the
threshold populations that make urban rail systems a viable alternative?
Unfortunately here the picture is less encouraging. The case for investment in
bus services is accepted at an intellectual level but not at the visceral level
by many key decision-makers. Even though the Government has accepted the Stage
Bus Services Transformation based on the gross-cost model as the permanent
solution for bus services in second- and third-tier cities in Malaysia, the
amount of financing allocated is not yet enough to implement this in all state
capitals let along all second- and third-tier urban areas. We Malaysians always
like to compare our bus system to those of other countries. Yet we conveniently
forget how much it costs to provide such good service. London and now Singapore are both funding 35% of the cost of
their bus services. Smaller cities like Perth in Australia and Waikato in New
Zealand require even higher funding at close to 70%.
To
date the Government allocated RM470 million for the Interim Stage Bus Support
Fund and only RM100 million for its permanent replacement – the Stage Bus Services
Transformation. We in SPAD estimate that full implementation will require about
RM972 million and then reduce to about RM300 million per year. In the larger
scheme of things, this does not seem too high but yet we have not yet been able
to get the budget allocation for it. The reasons are many, buses are seen as a
declining mode, that it is not patronized by many Malaysians, that it is almost
a lost cause. This is a defeatist attitude. Yes, the ridership is not high at
the moment. It has been declining for over 30 years. They cannot be reversed
immediately. The SBST must be given time and allocation to show that bus
services are a viable public transport solution for our second- and third-tier
cities. As I mentioned earlier, the pilot implementation in Kangar and Seremban
showed that ridership increased by an average of 30%. SPAD is also doing its
part to reduce government reliance, encourage sustainability, and boost ridership.
Our future innovations include sophisticated network planning in state capital
cities across the Peninsular to cover high-value intercity routes, the introduction
of a smartphone app called Journey Planner to help commuters plan their travel,
and vigilantly monitoring bus operator performance through introducing quality
incentives and penalties on non-performance.
The
second policy tool that the Government has is policy on land use. We, and here
I mean State Governments and Local Authorities must use all powers at their
disposal to increase the density of urban areas. Urban sprawl must be checked
and where possible reversed. State and local governments must adopt as a matter
of policy what I like to call the 4C approach – to foster compact, connected
and coordinated cities.
Different
cities can apply the 4C approach in different ways. Small and medium-sized
cities in Malaysia growing at 6% or more per year could design-in compact urban
growth features from the start. These include integrating residential,
commercial and industrial areas and designing efficient public transport
routes. They could provide connected infrastructure by introducing road-based
public transit system such as the conventional bus and Bus Rapid Transit
systems. Where appropriate urban rail systems including trams could also be
provided. They can introduce coordinated governance by building up capacity,
systems and procedures to carry out integrated land use – transport planning in
a pro-active manner.
One
such practical way to do this is to encourage transit-oriented development
(TOD). Currently in Malaysia, we only have one true TOD i.e. the KL Sentral
area. Why aren’t we having more such developments? The upcoming MRT projects
have such potential for TOD. Indeed I would like us to go beyond the TOD around
stations and instead expand it to TOD corridors along rail and BRT corridors.
Certainly more clarity is needed regarding the legal processes and the
implementation processes, we have start to do this now. Retrofitting is not
just more difficult but also more costly. This is the irony of development. The
price of land along transit corridors goes up not because of anything the land
owners did but because the Government spent money to do this. Then afterwards
if we try to acquire more land for TOD, the Government has to pay the new
higher costs of the land. So the Government pays twice.
Medium
and large Malaysia cities expecting growth rates of 5-6% per annum could
introduce several compact urban growth strategies. These include
re-densification through regeneration of existing city cores and supporting
hubs, developing multiple hubs, encouraging brownfield re-development, encouraging
transit-oriented developments and urban retrofitting as well as managed growth
of the urban periphery.
Planning
and implementation of all these initiatives requires skilled human resources.
We need well-qualified engineers, economists and planners for this purpose.
This is where universities have a role to play. You are the ones who ae going
to train our future generation of public transport professionals and so it is
my hope that you will later your courses to meet the demands of the sector. We
in SPAD have set up an SPAD Academy and it is my hope that all universities
will collaborate with the Academy to increase the number of industry-ready
professionals. At the same time, we also hope that academics in our
universities will extend the frontiers of knowledge in fields relevant to public transport especially in the areas of
methodological advancements that I identified earlier.
Conclusion
All
this may sound academic and theoretical for some of you. Let me assure you that
it is not. It will affect how our cities and thus how we live our lives in the
future. Do we want urban sprawl or a compact city? Do we want a car-oriented
city or a public transport-oriented city? In case you are not sure let me refer
you to an objective guide. Every year the Mercer consulting firm publishes the
city quality of life index. For the 2014 edition, the top five cities are in
order of their ranking Vienna, Zurich, Auckland, Munich and Vancouver. All
except Vancouver are very compact cities with good public transport. Even
Vancouver is relatively compact by North American standards and is noted for
its good public transport system. Thus the choices that we make today will
influence our quality of life tomorrow. This is why I mentioned that in the end
the most important thing about public transport is the public. We must
transform pubic transport to ensure that it becomes the first choice of the
rakyat and not the last resort. This is what we in the present generation owe
our children and our grandchildren to ensure that they have a better quality of
life.
Thank
you.
