JULY 18 — All our lives would be that much better with more buses.
Before diving into that, let’s jet-set halfway across the world to the United States.
In New York City, daily there are 3.4 million train and 1.4 million bus rides. In a city of 8.4 million residents. That is half a ride for each resident, daily.
First world, Rome of the new world John Lennon called it — and died in. The city reputedly has the highest number of millionaires, 340,000 of them, and half the city takes public transportation.
Compare that with Klang Valley — Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya — with around eight million residents. Can we all agree, considerably less rich? The average annual salary in New York City is US$107,000 (RM499,408) as opposed to US$19,000 in Klang Valley.
More than five times and half of them take public transport daily.
Based on data.gov.my, run by our government, there are presently less than 0.6 million train and 0.15 million bus rides daily in the Klang Valley. Or in ratio to people, less than one in 10 use public transportation.
Jagged comparisons. The richer commute and the poorer abstain.
Unconvinced, perhaps view those in proximity?
All South-east Asian major cities are transport messes, with gridlocks daily realities. Yet, all desire public transportation infrastructures to bring down private drivers during business hours. MRT Ho Chi Minh is slated to begin this month, earlier this year Indonesia played up its trains and Manila is with MRT 3 now.
Trains are amazing to bring down traffic in main thoroughfares but buses complement and complete the transportation puzzle.
Just ask Singapore which has a bus fleet which registers annual profits.
And buses are why we are stuck in the muck, literally. Not in them but waiting for them.
It is 20 minutes from city-centre to my local station, pretty neat. However, it takes up to an hour to reach my residence with the feeder bus during peak hours. Train traverses 12.6 kilometres in 20 minutes and the last three kilometres may require 1.5 hours during off peak.
It is the very definition of a mad proposition.
If it can be two hours by public transport, or four hours two ways, might as well drive through peak traffic both ways for an hour, and only two hours a day. While listening to favourite Spotify tunes.
Which explains why MRT/Komuter/LRT stations are clogged up with waiting cars — family members or flatmates who wait to transport train patrons to the end point.
Also helps explain how the Malaysian population — with less than half of Thailand, a third of Vietnam, a quarter of the Philippines — buys more cars than all our Asean brothers bar one, Indonesia. The republic has more than eight times the Malaysian population.
In an era where town planners want to remove private vehicles from cities, Malaysians are stepping on the purchase accelerator.
Paradigms
Malaysia is different to the whole world, it is unique therefore it does not need to oblige the way of the world, our leaders are brainwashed to repeat. Perhaps there are legitimate reasons to disrespect global trends.
But there are local developments. How to ignore those?
The fuel rationalisation has begun with diesel — and political games delay, not reverse, the trajectory to be eventually subsidy-free. Mandatory minimum wages have not altered our decades-old wage stagnation. Household debt levels rise steadily up.
You've seen this movie before.
If there is one direct way to offset shrinking disposable incomes, it is to lower the transportation bill. A family of five in Klang valley can rely on RM50 transport passes (rail and bus), which totals RM250. As opposed to far more than RM1,000 a month for loan repayments, vehicle maintenance and fuel.
They can if the buses arrive.
Bully pulpit
My Damansara Jaya critic said I was too preachy last week, so I saved the sermon for last.
As I walked out of my unit to head to the bus stop last week, Robo — an old former football teammate — was sitting on a bench and asked me where’s my car when I answered I was taking the bus. He had a baffled look. It made no sense, to him and his universe.
The purpose of moving out of student life and early career, living before retirement is to avoid public transportation, to Robo, if I can put my mind-reading skills to the test.
And indeed, the vast majority of less than 150,000 who take the bus in Klang Valley daily are students, new graduates, blue-collared workers, retirees and foreign workers — Dhaka, not London.
My take is cynical. Students and new graduates are forced into this rite of passage, to stoke their fires. “I will pass my accounting papers, and never be forced to take the bus, ever again!”
Retirees, well they have the time. No one is waiting for them, so does it matter if they are late?
We have lived through 40 years of clinical destruction of our buses through state neglect, to facilitate Malaysia’s ambition to dominate the automotive industry, turn Proton into the next Toyota.
Instead, four decades down, Geely owns Proton as a small pawn in its global pursuit for supremacy. Malaysians are out and out car buyers.
They may live in low-cost housing projects but in the compound its triple parking and all over the adjacent roads, illegal street parking on both sides. Easy rule, use all space as long as one car can pass.
Buses gave way to mass private car ownerships which choke our lives and empty our pockets. By the way, did I mention it was Mahathir Mohamad’s 99th birthday last week?
The conditions are urging us to look at a reboot of our bus fleets in a massive way. There are around 2,000 bus rides in Kuantan daily. In a state capital without trains, and 400,000 people, it is safe to say a private car is a prerequisite to have a life over there.
It’s dire and no politician, ministry or leader campaigns on it. It’s not sexy political theatre.
The years of neglect have their human casualties.
Millions have felt pains uncared for decades waiting for buses. As if they are the last concern in a country too obsessed with repeat constructions of buildings so that in record-time they can be emptier longer.
Many have passed on like my mom. But all in solidarity — even in absence — about the silent waits for buses in a combination of despair, false hopes and complete helplessness.
How many months — or years? — of our lives robbed waiting for hours for buses?
Buses symbolise an organised society
Let’s leave this conversation at a junction with hope as a possible turn. Unfortunately, hopelessness is the other turn.
It is quaint, or maybe a taunt, that our government states at the top of the home page about public transportation statistics, Gustavo Petro’s quote: “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.”
He said it when he was Bogota’s mayor. The Colombian city still has terrible public transportation.
But you expect a left-wing ex-guerilla to say rubbish like that. Malaysians all know a developed country is where there are large edifices with malfunctioning toilets, and who cares where the poor are, let alone travel on?
Petro is now Colombia’s president. Maybe being aspirational can inspire voters. It definitely got more votes over there just for dreaming. Over here?
