Letters
by Moaz Yusuf Ahmad
Subang Jaya,
Selangor

RE: Putrajaya monorail report and Putrajaya Corp. bus purchases

When it was announced in early 2008 that the government was taking another look at the Putrajaya monorail, it could hardly have come at a better time. This was in late April/early May, and I had just finished participating in the Majlis Bajet Consultation 2009. My experience trying to get from Persiaran Putrajaya (the site of the Finance Ministry) to Putrajaya Sentral was ironic. Though the bus fleet had improved (in terms of size) information about bus services and bus shelters was still non-existent on the main island.

My comments about the poor infrastructure for the bus services and the lack of demand to justify a monorail would strike a chord with many people. They agreed with me about the irony of investing millions of RM to build a monorail instead of investing a few thousand RM to build bus shelters that could be enjoyed by many.

Now that the report on the monorail has been completed it would be very interesting to hear what it has to say. Sadly, the government is keeping quiet about the report.

Fortunately, there is an interesting clue in the announcement about the Putrajaya Corporation’s plan to buy 15 buses soon and 104 buses with the allocation from the 9MP.

At the moment the Putrajaya corporation has 25 or more 12m buses, powered by clean natural gas. It is anyone’s guess how many of these buses are actually operating under the NadiPutra service at any given time, but the fleet size is certainly adequate for the needs of Putrajaya.

With the addition of 15 buses, the fleet would be more than 50 buses, which would certainly be more than adequate for Putrajaya, as well as Cyberjaya and probably Kajang and Sepang as well. In fact, with a fleet of 50 buses, NadiPutra might even be capable of running direct services to KL, using the KL-Putrajaya highway. Such a service would be quite competitive against the existing RapidKL and Metrobus and even against the KLIA Transit. And with a fleet of 50 buses, the monorail would be quite unnecessary for Putrajaya. Hence, perhaps the intent to purchase the buses is a clue that the monorail will not be built anytime soon.

But that may not be the case. The intent to purchase 104 more buses is quite strange because I cannot imagine that the Putrajaya Corporation would need 150 buses to operate bus services in and around Putrajaya. I am even afraid to imagine that they might build the monorail and have a fleet of 150 buses.

The whole thing sounds like a massive mis-allocation of funds which could be used to improve public transport services in other communities. As I stated more than 2 years ago, it is highly unfair that KL, Petaling Jaya, Ipoh, Penang, Johor Bahru, and many other Malaysian communities are suffering from pollution and traffic congestion and poor public transport while a small city like Putrajaya gets a fleet of all-CNG buses that is far larger than what it actually needs.