THE government needs to address the longstanding, severe traffic congestion in Kuala Lumpur.
The most important step: adding more public buses and improving their quality of service. People prefer to use their cars over buses due to lack of confidence in the public bus system.
However, if they see more buses on the road and experience a more efficient service, they will feel more confident in using these buses as their main mode of transport.
The next step is for the local councils to gradually increase parking charges to discourage people from using their cars.
Local councils should also impose stricter enforcement and penalties for drivers who park their cars illegally, such as double parking. This widespread occurrence causes severe congestion and is unfair to other drivers.
Apart from that, lanes dedicated to motorcycles need to be built on KL highways. Many motorcyclists in KL drive at high speeds. This leads to a higher number of road accidents.
Traffic congestion is a huge inconvenience for road users and has a negative impact on the mental health of drivers. It also gives a bad image of the country to tourists.
The government needs to seriously implement the above measures as soon as possible to effectively eradicate KL’s longstanding, severe traffic congestion.
Given that next year is Visit Malaysia 2026, high priority must be given towards addressing this problem.
Raveen Veerasenan Jeyakumar
Ipoh