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.