Penang expands car-free Sundays in George Town

TRANSIT took note of this article announcing the expansion of car-free Sundays in the central business district of George Town.

This initiative of the Penang Government and MPPP will likely be well-received by most residents of the area as well as visitors.

We hope to see more people using public transportation to get to the Central Business District to enjoy the car-free spaces in a carefree manner.

Ban’s on every Sunday (The Star)
Saturday December 10, 2011
>By KIATISAK CHUA

DRIVERS and motorcyclists heading towards George Town’s Central Business District on Sunday from now onwards should take note that certain stretches of roads will be cordoned off from 7am to 5pm in conjunction with ‘Car Free Day’.

The affected roads are parts of Beach Street, Bishop Street, Church Street, and the whole of Church Street Ghaut which runs from Weld Quay to Beach Street.

Beach Street will be off limits to motor vehicles from the China Street junction to the Union Street junction, while both Bishop Street and Church Street will be closed from the Beach Street junction to the Penang Street junction.

This Sunday, a stage will be erected at the Beach Street roundabout in front of the Penang Immigration Office, where Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng will officially launch the ‘Car Free Day’ programme at 7am.

Participation is open to everyone, where the public will have the opportunity to cycle, walk, jog, skate or even take the trishaws which will be parked at the event venue for them to ride.

There will be a school band performance within the cordoned area as well as an aerobics performance to entertain the crowds.

At 7.30am, a 10km bicycle ride will be flagged off from Beach Street where the cyclists will ride to the Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway, Esplanade and back to the starting point.

Meanwhile for those who are inclined towards a more relaxing activity can join in the leisure ride in the car free zone which will be flagged off 15 minutes after the first one.

There will be a third flagging off at 8am for the public, where they will have the opportunity to swarm onto the usual car-infested road without the fear of being knocked down.

The arrival of a car-free day is great news for Penangites and visitors, as long as it remains an event that is enjoyable to residents and still maintains the authenticity of the central business district area.

We do not want to see George Town become an historical theme park where drivers come to gawk at strange people or enjoy strange experiences like walking on the street without fear.

TRANSIT wants to see an enjoyable day where all of the public can get out of their houses and experience and enjoy their public spaces together.

As we said above, we hope that more people will use public transport to get down to the Central Business District to enjoy car-free day. We would also be very happy if RapidPenang would start mounting bicycle racks on RapidPenang buses as part of a trial with, with the purpose of encouraging intermodal trave

Is the old Penang tram track causing problems?

TRANSIT took note of this article from Penang, where motorcyclists are apparently facing risk of injury because of ‘slippery’ tram tracks.

These tram tracks were unearthed during roadwork on Penang Road which began in 2004. The tram tracks were maintained and interlocking brickwork was placed on the outside of the tracks, with a concrete base in between the rails.

The presence of the concrete section, combined with the rails, can cause motorcyclists (probably turning from Chulia St.) to skid.

Slippery ride on tramway track
Wednesday March 17, 2010
By PRISCILLA DIELENBERG
Photos by NG AH BAK

THE obsolete slippery tramway track along Penang Road has caused many a motorcyclist to fall ever since the completion of the RM4.4mil Upper Penang Road federal upgrading project in May 2008.

Colonial legacy: A file photo of the unearthed tramway track at the Chulia Street-Penang Road junction in 2004.

According to traders along Penang Road, numerous motorcyclists have skidded and toppled over because of the concrete filled in between the metal rails.

Sio Lye Hock, 50, who operates a general goods store near the Phee Choon Road and Penang Road junction, said he had seen more than 20 motorcyclists falling over.

“And that is only in front of my shop. I heard that there had been many other instances further down the road where there is less traffic congestion,” he said.

Yeoh Guat Choo, 75, who runs a stall at the Chowrasta market, said the stretch was especially slippery when it rained and even the buses would screech to a halt when they hit the stretch.

“Oh, I have seen motorcycles falling in front of my stall many, many times.

Road hazard: (From right) Ng, Foo and Sio examining cracks that appeared on the tramway track.

[TRANSIT: If you take a look at the image above, you can see why the area would be slippery when wet. There are three different surfaces (interlocking brickwork, the rails and the concrete in between the rails) which all can become slippery with rain.]

“If the tracks can be tarred up, that would be best,” she said.

Chowrasta Market Area Tua Peh Kong Devotees Association secretary Foo Wah Choong, 62, said he had seen many motorcyclists skid and fall at night.

“There is less traffic along this part of the road at night and motorcycles tend to go faster,” he said, adding that the area was brightly lit at night.

The tracks were first discovered at the junction of Chulia Street and Penang Road in September 2004 during digging works to facilitate the replacement of old public utility cables and pipes under Phase 1B of the Upper Penang Road (UPR) upgrading project.

The Penang Municipal Council decided to preserve the tracks and by the time Phase 2 of the project was completed in May 2008, about 1km of the tramline running along Penang Road from the junction of Chulia Street to the junction of Jalan Dr Lim Chwee Leong had been preserved.

Komtar assemblyman Ng Wei Aik said he had received many complaints from traders and residents about frequent accidents at the tracks.

He said he was writing to the council’s engineering department to ask the council to get its consultant and contractor to review the situation and come up with a solution for the safety of road users.

“The tracks serve no purpose, they are not attracting any tourists. Nobody is coming all the way here just to look at them,” said Ng.

“We don’t need to preserve something just for the sake of heritage if the feature is not practical.

“In this case, the safety of road users is more important.”

He said that even if the state decided one day to re-introduce a tram system,not all trams needed rails to run.

[TRANSIT: 'Trams' that run on tyres that are used for tourist areas are not real trams - they are buses.]

“Besides, the unearthed tramline is only a short stretch. Even if trams are re-introduced, it’s not feasible to dig up many more kilometres of old tracks,” he added.

TRANSIT Says:

It is a bit disappointing to read this story. The tram tracks, having been unearthed, have been preserved and can be seen when walking along Penang Road.

However, the Penang Island Council & Penang government have not really done much beyond that. The concrete base between the rails is seeing damage caused by water seepage, and then there is the safety issue caused by the multiple surfaces.

The local council cannot do much to improve safety here because the track track is a part of the roadway and there is a curve at this location.  The combination of the curve, plus the different vectors at the curve, plus the merging traffic plus the rails is not good for those who drive fast.

The best way to reduce the number of accidents would be to remind motorcyclists to cross the track at 90 degrees (perpendicular) rather than at a shallower angle, and to cross at a slower speed.

In the long term, it is very likely that something will have to be done about the tram tracks. They are a part of Penang’s heritage but cannot be used by modern trams or replica trams.  The concrete base & the brickwork would shift as a result of vibrations from the tram, which would result in damage.

Covering the tracks with tar will probably not be effective because the tar would wear down, and the tracks would eventually become exposed.

Sources : http://transitmy.org/2010/03/18/penang-tram-track-causing-problems/

Towards a Sustainable Transportation Strategy for Penang

The development of an alternative transport strategy based on a drastic increase in the use of a public transportation system (rather than dependence on private vehicles) is a matter of urgency, as there is a lead time of a few years before effective implementation of any decision to adopt such a strategy.

A sustainable transportation system must be integrated with the structure and local plans which determine the pattern of growth and development of Penang. In fact, the local and structure plans must adopt a sustainable transport system as part of its development planning strategy. This would result in a more sustainable path to development.

Rapid Penang service in Weld Quay.

Issues of environmental sustainability will be of increasing concern in the coming decades when the global depletion of energy and other natural resources will become more evident. Resource depletion will lead to escalating prices. A total reduction of energy use through energy conservation and greater efficiency will decrease the environmental impacts of green house gases generated by the internal combustion engine.

A greater use of public transportation and better urban planning will reduce the total amount of energy needed for mobility. This will reduce the adverse impacts of our activities and will help fulfill Malaysia’s obligation of reducing our environmental impacts to a sustainable level as mandated under the international convention on global climate change.

Mobility and accessibility for people rather than the movement of cars should be the primary objective of a sustainable transport policy.

Mobility and accessibility should be considered as one of the basic needs of the population and an objective of social equity.

Maybe we should turn to this? =)

Source:

http://www.igeorgetownpenang.com/opinion/209-transport-system-needs-radical-overhaul

Rapid Penang Take Over by State Goverment?

Rapid Penang suffered a loss of RM10.5m in 2009 (The Star). While public transport is a social obligation and should not be viewed as a profit-seeking venture, there is a lot of room for improvement in Rapid Penang, as pointed out in the Auditor General’s report (The Star).

For one thing, effectiveness could be improved if routes were modified and more feeder buses and transit stations implemented. An integrated ticketing system could work wonders.

But I heard that State government would like to offer a bid to takeover the Rapid Penang bus services from the Federal Government. Mismanagement may leads to a loss in operation the said. We had heard much before how the state government have provide many new things to keep up the Rapid Penang bus services better, such as providing a free WiFi connection (in partnership with DiGi) in every bus. Yes you heard me right. A free internet connection in every bus. As a student, I found that this features is really useful and interesting. That's means that  you will always connected to the internet anywhere in Penang (almost, actually).

3 hours of waiting just to open up the Google? Smile.

However, that is just a rumours. Maybe in the next few years they can made a huge profit when the services are widely available across the State of Penang. It is also good to see whether the state government are going to add more interesting features into this Rapid Penang bus services? Only time will tell. On the other half, what is your opinion about this issues? Bad or good? Let's us discuss it here! 

Planning Issue #1

Transportation in Penang : Issues & Problems

Various transportation modes in Penang

Transportation is one of the vital planning issues. it can be defined as the medium that people use to move from one location to the other location. In case of Penang, these are many transportation modes can be found here from daily found car, motorcycle, bus to its famous ferry and aircraft services. However, due to various factors, the transportation in Penang had plague with many problems. So, in this entry I would like to address the factors that made Penang's transportation services are not really efficient as it should be.


PROBLEMS
One of the main problems of Penang's transportation is traffic congestion. Mainly occurs during early in the morning and peaked at the evening, this scenario are normal views in Penang, especially near the George Town , Bayan Lepas and the Penang Bridge. This congestion happened on the time where people are going out to work, school and the other places. When all these people came out at the same time on the same road, it caused the traffic congestion.

Traffic congestion in George Town in evening.

Georgetown is considered as the nightmare among the driver in Penang, especially during evening, where all the people are going home at the same time. In some cases, the traffic would spanned from the city center of the Georgetown until the Penang Bridge, where drivers would stucked in this congestion for several hours!
This may happened during the festives seasons; Chinese New Year and Hari Raya Aidilfitri. It would be miracle if u could run away from this massive traffic congestion. =)

Luckily this doesnt happened in Malaysia

The other issues that caused the traffic congestion here is there are lot of private vehicles on the roads. With the cheap national car model, combines with the relatively lower petrol price, it is a normal for each Penangites to have a car. Dont be surprised if you can found more than one car in one house in Penang. With the booming economic growth, the Penangnites socioeconomic level are the third highest in the country after Selangor and Johor.


So, with the increasing number of private cars in roads, it could caused a traffic congestion; especially when the roads circulation are not really good and efficient. In case of Penang, I dont think a bad road circulation would become a major factor causing the traffic congestion. There are many highway already been built to support the increased number of traffic volumes in Penang; Jelutong Expressway ( Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu Expressway), Penang Outer Ring Road (PORR) and the Butterworth Outer Ring Road (BORR).

Traffic congestion in Penang Bridge

Traffic congestion, while it is also could pumped up someone's tension, it is also has negative impact on our environment, where every vehicles would leave a lot carbon footprint to the atmosphere, causing the fog and possibly the acid rain. So, the effective ways are needed to reduce this traffic congestion to the minimum level.


PROPOSED SOLUTIONS
i) Strenghten the Public Transport Services
Right now, the only major public transport services in Penang are bus, taxi, ferry and airplane. (the latter would be defined for the long range purposes.) Bus services in Penang are now dominantly controlled by the Rapid Penang, a Penang version of KL's Rapid KL services, which entered service in late 2007. With a fleet of whopping 250+ buses, it served all over the Penang state.

People are taking the Rapid Penang buses at Weld Quay.

With the massive fleet, one would wait the bus with a shorter length of time, except for some routes (Balik Pulau and Georgetown - Butterworth). For me, this is good enough to encourage people to use the public transport. Along the cheap ticket prices, we can save alot of money (petrol and higway fees) and times too.


I believes in the next 2 -3 years, this service would become the transport of choice among the Penangites as the increased in the oil prices would make them to use public transport.

An efficient public transport services? You decide.

ii) New Transportation Modes
Seems like the Penangites already bored with the current public transport? I think so because like what my economic lecturer said in the last semester, the people of Penang are like to have something the people of Kuala Lumpur had. Take an example of Rapid Penang and Penang Times Square. These are based on what KL had. So I think by introducing the new transportation system like what they have in KL, it would encourage people here to use this new transportation and would minimize the traffic congestion.

Will Penang Monorail would be a succeed?

As an example, we can apply the KL Monorail system right here in Penang, especially in Geoge Town. This KL Monorail only operates on its own track, without using the current road system. As it only operates in the George Town, people from outside need to park their car outside the city and then take the monorail on the nearby station. While promoting the healthy lifestyle where people need to walk to use this service, it also help reducing the number of vehicles in the George Town and thus, reducing the traffic congestion. In the future, maybe this service could be done in the other part of Penang such as Butterworth, Bukit Mertajam and Bayan Lepas area.


Overall, the transportation in Penang would reached it maximum level in the next few years; the increasing number of citizen, more highway are built, completion of Second Penang Bridge and the biggest issues : land limitation. It is needed for us, the people of Penang (Im from Perak however) to start using the public transport as our main transportation modes. It is not just reducing the traffic congestion, but it would make us realize the importance of the public transport, taking a good care the environment and many more. =)

An example of a clean traffic.

Planning Studio 300 : Part I

Planning Studio 300 Progress


In this entry I would like to write about the current progress of my Planning Studio 300. Early this semester, our studio coordinator, Mr Ghapar & Dr Nurwati had assigned us to apply an element of SPATIAL DESIGN onto our chosen site.Before that, we all are divided onto 12 groups out of 25 students in our studio. 


So, this assignment would be a pair work. Luckily, I got Siti Azilah as my teamwork [I don’t know how she felt when she was on the same group with me =)].  Shortly after they finished briefing about this assignment, I and Azilah discussed about the spatial element and the site that we need to choose. Finally, we came out with 2 different site and spatial elements: Transportation and Waterfront Development.



First Site: Butterworth Ferry Terminal

SITE ANALYSIS

Our first proposed site is located in Ferry Terminal, Butterworth, and Penang. It is located on the seaside of Penang, facing the Penang Island. It is located about 20km from the island and can be reached by either the Penang Bridge or by taking the ferry from the Georgetown. We found that the site (the whole Butterworth Terminal & its surround) are scattered and seems no integrated between the ferry terminal, bus station, railway station and the roads. We also found that the car park are limited, caused some serious traffic congestion in certain time.  There are also some undeveloped, abandoned areas near the terminal that can cause many negative impacts, especially social problem.

PROSPOSED

As there is no integrated transportation system here, we planned to have one integrated transportation system here, consist of ferry terminal, bus and taxi station and railway station. Plus, the multi-levelled parking lot is also proposed to counter the serious traffic congestion here.

Second Site: Bagan Dalam, Butterworth, Penang

SITE ANALYSIS

Out second site is Bagan Dalam, located about 8km from Butterworth Terminal. It is placed alongside the Sg Puyu River. There are many housing area along the riverside. Some of the areas are covered by the mangrove plant which grows here. Plus, some of the area are abandoned and left undeveloped. We also found that the rivers are polluted by the nearby industrial site. Plus, there are some housing areas near the river (Taman Bagan) which offer a great view of the Sg Puyu River.



PROPOSED


With the booming tourism industry in Penang, the site is suitable to develop as the tourist hotspot. The site can be developed as the riverside tourism centre, much likely as the Malacca’s riverside tourism. The mangrove area can be transformed as the recreational area for the surrounds community. The riverside cruise service can be also provided as one of the tourism product here. The main problem however, the polluted water can reduced the number of people from coming here. So, we also planned to purify the polluted water using the green technology available, such as the state’s mud ball programme. With this, it is hoped that the community are aware about the pollution issues here. Then, the tourist facilities such as chalet can be developed there.
After we proposed both site to our studio masters, they give us a green light on the first site: Butterworth Terminal. We felt very happy because there are so many ideas surround our mind right now on how to design and develop this site to become the main integrated transportation hub in Northern Region.




26/9/2011
On this day, we had presented our site analysis based on the site visit that we had done twice before. Both of our studio masters agree with the first site : BUTTERWORTH TERMINAL. So, started from today, we began collecting data from various sources to prepare for the next site analysis presentation. =)

Planning Aspect : Sewerage System

My first presentation is about the planning aspects. They are many planning aspects that can be choose such as transportation, pedestrian walk, waterfront development, urban sprawl, slump area and sustainable development.

I choose the topic of Sewerage system. I know its sound awkward especially when we are talking about the planning aspects. However, I do believe that this topic is also important in planning aspects, especially when we are designing a new city which a good sewerage system is vital.

The Sewerage System

The system of pipes used to collect and carry rain, waste water and trade waste away for treatment and disposal is called the sewerage or the waste water system.

There are three types of sewerage systems:

• Foul sewers – carry waste water, that is water that has been used for cooking and washing, waste from toilets and from trade premises to our wastewater treatment works;

• Surface water, or Storm sewers – carry rainwater from roofs, paved areas, pavements and roads.  Surface water sewers generally flow into streams, rivers or watercourses;

• Combined sewer – this is a single pipe system which carries both wastewater and surface water to our wastewater treatment works.  These are often found in older town centre systems.  Single pipe systems are no longer designed or constructed.

It is an offence to discharge foul sewage to a sewer designated for surface water or surface water into a sewer designated for foul sewage.

All new sewerage systems should be designed on separate foul and surface water (storm sewers) systems.

My Planning Blog~ =)

Hi guys! this is my first ever entry for my blog which is dedicated only to discuss on the matter of urban and regional planning issues. This is also part of my Planning Studio 300 project, which is conducted by Mr Ghapar & Pn Nurwati.

   picture  above doesn't reflected the latter name.. =)

Through the courses of this studio, they will be many presentation, perhaps too many presentation. Since I am lack confident to present in front of people, I found this is really putting a BIG burden on my shoulder. 


However, when I think it wisely maybe I can use this chance to improve my presenting and communication skill and even to gain more confidence in front of crowd. Me too have a problem in speak in English since it is not my first & native language. You will found a lot of grammatical mistakes in here and my next entries. Maybe I should learn improvising my grammar first eh? =)


That,s all for now. The next time in my entry will be all about the urban and regional planning. We can discuss on regarding on various planning issues that plaguing the urban world nowadays. See u next time!