In the 3 and a decimal years I've been residing in this lovely city - it really is one of the most 'liveable' (that word never does justice to anything it precedes!) cities I've been to and/or lived in, I've never come across a single person who hasn't tasted the most abundant Jam in KL. Coming from Delhi which plays host to more cars than ALL the cars in Malaysia (I'm sure that exaggeration is true! or almost ;-) ), which has fewer wide roads and highways than KL does, these Jams make very little sense to me. Anyhoo - that's been debated to death...
So whatever happened to good old-fashioned public transportation?
You can still age a year or more waiting for a bus on a MAIN route! The LRT system serves about 20% of the city or less. The monorail system is...aah forget it. Cabs hide in trees when it rains - yeah I've seen em! So if you haven't a set of wheels - you can connect the dots now...
So you buy a car (each member buys one, remember?) and add to the congestion. You're the 45th car in the 50 car-length jam every morning and every evening.
You're smart - you start off from home before the birds wake up, well so are all your neighbours! So, in time you begin to consider a shit, shower, shave before going to bed to save some time the next morning. Even so you're never getting anywhere without having spent 45 mins more than you should've to drive that distance to work. This half the sad story...
To avoid jams you spend your evenings in office - no point in getting caught in jam wert, you manufacture work, take on more work so as to 'leave for home at 8pm when the jam no more', you have dinner in office when you should be enjoying dinner with your family - or for that matter, your cat! And you inadvertently add to your workload - which incidentally is free time for the organization. So this is another hour spent over and above your work-day? Even so, it takes you 30 mins more than it should getting back home.
We now have about 2 hours which every KL resident wastes (of 24) on the road+office.
Let's for once assume 100,000 drivers (trust me, it's a small number) suffer each day.
Let's assume each person earns about RM30 per work hour on an average (car owners wert!).
Let's assume each car is on average a 1.2L vehicle (trust me, cars are big here).
Let's assume one burns about .1l of fuel needlessly caught in jams.
You're looking at 200,000 hu'man' hours wasted every day.
Which costs RM6,000,000.
In doing so we've wasted 10,000litres of fuel.
And this was accomplished in ONE day... Do the math folks.
Question : would you like a kick-ass Public Transportation system, or do you want to eat jam?
