Innovation to develop excellent public transport

If you pay peanuts, you get monkey. The same applies to public transport. An excellent transit system is not cheap. 

However, public transport needs more than funds to achieve excellence. It requires good town planning. 

Here lies the problem - public transport and town planning are often conceived and operated as separate department. Transport experts focus only on mobility while planners on buildings and landscape. 

The result? Billions are pumped into public transport yet the usage of public transport remains dismal. 

The purported 2018 net losses of Prasarana Malaysia Berhad, the country's main operator of public transport, was between RM3 billion to RM5 billion, with estimated impairment of RM30 billion. 

With so many billions spent, how many trips were taken via public transport in Klang Valley? About 21%. At other places, the figure is way lower. In Penang, it's between 3% to 8%.

To complicate matters further, the states in Malaysia have limited control over tax money and automobile trade policies, which means that they don't have much say over public transport infrastructure.

States have more control over land use. Therefore, one solution is to incorporate town planning back into public transport development and vice versa. 

When we do that, then solving transport issues is no longer only about buying more buses or building a Light Rail Transit (LRT). It's about developing a transit city.

A transit city optimises public transport and generates fund through land usage to finance the development, maintenance, and upgrading of the transit system.

This idea, broadly known as 'transit-oriented development' (TOD), may be something new to many and suspicious to the skeptics, but it is time-tested and proven successful in various cities that are different from each other. 

Take Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) as an example. When MTR plan was unveiled with a price tag of HK$3.4 billion in the late 1960s, professor Sean Mackey from the University of Hong Kong publicly criticised the proposal for its hefty cost.

Through an innovative town planning method known as 'Rail + Property', the MTR Corporation has not only managed to pay off the construction cost of the initial MTR line but also recorded a total profit of HK$139.67 billion from 2009 to 2019, with 90% public transport usage.

Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) had the same problem. The SG$5.3 billion MRT proposal was criticised by a team of experts led by professor Kenneth Hansen from Harvard University.

The Singaporean government did not back down. They undertook a 'land value capture' exercise to finance the MRT. The total revenue generated during the MRT development period from 1982 to 1987 exceeded SG$12 billion, more than enough to cover the construction cost. Today, the MRT serves as the backbone of Singapore's public transport system with 67% usage.

Other cities such as Copenhagen employs innovative 'profit sharing' method to fund their transit system.  In all sales agreements, the property buyer is required to pay additional fee every year for sixty years, after a metro station is built within 50 meters from the property. Copenhagen's public transport usage is 60%.

Details of these case studies can be found in Penang Institute's recent publication 'Exploring a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Framework for Penang’s Urban Growth.'

Penang is planning to build the Penang Transport Master Plan (PTMP) over the next several decades. This development can explore some of the TOD methods to finance the long-term transport plan.

Only the synergy from the best of transit development and town planning will save our public transport system from being a monkey business.

Orh Kueh, Latte, and Unicorn: Momentum Makes George Town

(Photo: Penang Global Tourism Facebook Page)

George Town was the place for Chinese medicine and orh kueh (yam cake) when I was young. Both shops are not there anymore. Today, they serve latte and cempedak cheese cake.

This year's July 7 marked the twelfth year of George Town's inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There has been a contest over the interpretation of the inscription, couched in phrases from the humanities.

When new businesses replace under-performing ones, it's labelled "Disneyfication". When properties receive new tenants, it's scorned as "gentrification".  When heritage buildings are being refurbished, it's castigated as "Unesco-cide". 

Marco D'Eramo epitomises this school of thoughts. "UNESCO’s ‘World Heritage’ listing," he writes, "is the kiss of death. Once the label is affixed, the city’s life is snuffed out; it is ready for taxidermy."

Taking a step back, I wonder if this is a form of nostalgia fossilisation? 

I understand the concern to preserve the "identity" of George Town. But can we say that today's collective identity is the progeny of George Town's past? This is iffy, is there such identity in the first place, not least a collective one?

There is sympathy for tenants who are affected by rising rental. But isn't rent-seeking a problem happening elsewhere too, not confined to heritage site? 

Community changes are associated to a string of factors. But when it happens in George Town, enthusiasts labelled it as "gentrification"? What then do we call rent-seeking that occurred in 2007 George Town, before the city was listed by Unesco? 

Like most trades, traditional trades in George Town have no guaranteed immortality. The Chinese medical hall that my family frequented had shut before the Unesco appellation came. As Dr Ang Ming Chee, general manager of George Town World Heritage Incorporated, observed:

“[If] the craftsmen don’t want to produce and the locals do not take these products as a part of their identity, then you’re stuck as well. For it to be sustainable you have to look at it in the long term. There’s supply and demand; and there’s the availability and cost of the raw materials.

“Take rattan weaving for example – it might be harder or costlier to obtain raw materials due to factors such as urbanisation and deforestation. Rattan weaving is a skill, but most of the weavers we interviewed who decided not to continue their craft said it was because weaving is too painful – if you look at their hands, you can feel the pain. They work hard to send their children for higher education so that they don’t have to do physical work; it’s an achievement for them, whereas we want continuity – we are selfish.” (Emphasis added.)

Is the pain of rattan weavers a characteristic of George Town's heritage and must therefore persist? 

Fossilising nostalgia may be a hobby to enthusiasts but George Town gained prominence as a trading port. People from surrounding region came here to trade. New businesses were formed to serve them, and many made their home here as a result. Changes haven't stopped in the past 300 years.

Carving life into stone, suspending momentum that makes George Town what it is today may not be the way forward for the heritage site. 

Instead, can George Town's future be re-imagined as the heart of the 21st century trade? Startups creating unicorn in a 19th century shop?

The potential of the heritage buildings in George Town is not confined only to serving latte and cempedak cheese cake.

High speed rail as catalyst for regional growth

The decision over the High Speed Rail (HSR) project linking Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, and Johor to Singapore has been deferred to the end of the year. This will be the last extension for Malaysia and Singapore to finalise technicalities before the project's launch.[1]

HSR system is not only a faster and more convenient mode of medium and long-distance travel but a catalyst for urban development and trade growth, as seen in several countries.

The construction of the South Europe Atlantic HSR that began in 2012 and completed in 2017 has created 14,000 jobs, generated €1.6 billion (RM7.6 billion) in production, with added value of €755 million (RM3.6 billion) in the three regions.[2]

After the installation of the HSR line that connects Cologne and Frankfurt since 2001, the GDP of the region had increased 8.5% faster than if the infrastructure had not been built. Provinces in China with HSR have observed 25% more revenues than provinces without HSR.[3]

Due to the immediate and long-term benefits, the United Kingdom has just launched their second HSR project known as HS2, connecting London to West Midlands, the largest infrastructure project in Europe.[4]

In southeast Asia, the two countries currently developing HSR are Thailand and Indonesia.

Thailand’s HSR will link three of their airports, serves as the core infrastructure development for their Eastern Economic Corridor, and an initiative aims to lift the country out of the middle-income trap.[5]

Indonesia’s HSR that connects Bandung and Jakarta is estimated to provide 40,000 jobs and anticipated to begin operation in 2021.[6]

These two immediate neighbours of Malaysia are now constructing the most advanced rail system despite having lower GDP per capita. Malaysia recorded US$10,254 GDP per capita in 2017, higher than Thailand (US$6,578) and Indonesia (US$3,893).[7] Should we be surprised if Thailand and Indonesia overtake Malaysia in the next one or two decades?

The HSR planned to connect the five states in Malaysia to Singapore has a huge role to play in the country’s progress. Not only does it serve the southern states but also be the first phase of a larger pan-Asian HSR network in the peninsula, as envisioned by the Kunming-Singapore rail line.

Seeing the HSR as a mere transport mode is underplaying its potential as a catalyst for the country’s and region’s growth.

References
[1] https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/malaysia-singapore-resume-discussions-highspeed-rail-project-soon-%E2%80%94-azmin

[2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12544-017-0233-0#ref-CR24

[3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12544-017-0233-0#ref-CR24

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-16473296

[5] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Transportation/Thailand-puts-high-speed-rail-project-on-track-with-land-pledge

[6] https://www.railwaygazette.com/in-depth/indonesia-making-progress-at-high-speed/55841.article

[7] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=TH-ID-MY