Penang Island, not Penang State, is not suitable for Light Rail Transit (LRT), instead of bus lanes to save 10 billion ringgit.
As we have mentioned it before in the last three parts, it is more suitable to build bus lanes. Just draw up the bus lanes from road to road, this would make things much easier.
The Penang Island map is here.
The major problem of the traffic jam on Penang Island is the parking at the road side. The users are not respecting the traffic rules. This would be the job of the Penang city council to educate and take action against these rule breakers. This is the internet age, one can easily solve the problem by knowing how many times one rule breaker has done the mischief.
How to solve the traffic problem on Penang Island:
1. do away the road side parking by the city council. City council is not getting much revenue from the road side parking lots.
2. build more parking lots if necessary in the nearby places like the Komtar. Even have to buy land, of which, not likely.
Use the parking lots to build short course swimming pools as we have suggested earlier. Read here
https://malaysiakusayang.blogspot.com/2023/01/part-1-penang-state-can-have-500.html
City council can get back the construction money by charging the entrance fee, getting advertisement from the swimming gears, food, even mobile phone and camera companies.
Swimming is the best exercise. You can read it here or search our blog, #swimming
https://malaysiakusayang.blogspot.com/2022/01/how-penang-state-can-run-half-olympics.html
3. loading and unloading of goods should be allowed at non busy hours, for example early in the morning or late at night when the bus service is not operating.
4. does Penang Island has the sufficient passengers to fill the operation cost for LRT , 12,0000 passengers per hour.
We will come back to discuss about how Singapore can implement MRT later.
Penang Island has little land for development due to the Penang Hill which Singapore does not have. Too many old buildings to be torn down. Penang government dares not torn down those old buildings like the late LEE Kuan Yew did.
Therefore, building parking lots plus swimming pools should be seriously considered instead of wasting the 10 billion ringgit and ended up as a white elephant.
Middle class people won't drive the cars to the LRT stations to take the LRT to town. They have good air conditioners in the car. Not much affecting them.
One city councilor from Seberang Perai made video and keep using the data of accident of BRT but he did not read about the LRT accident in Kuala Lumpur. Here is the report.
Rapid Penang, the bus company by Prasarana company has to buy the bus lanes. Of course, they can get back the money by advertisement on the bus, outside or inside, therefore, Penang government or federal government would get more revenue instead of throwing the money later.
The video below is not conclusive it focused more on BRT but Penang is on bus lane, lorong bas.
How to implement it is up to the ability of the staff in Penang government staff in internet age now.
Jakarta bus rapid transit is much mentioned but not on the whole system on the city skyline planning. Building one levelled up LRT track will destroy the beauty of the sky viewing. A city development does not base on the tall building and multiple flyovers.
The federal government should abolish the LRT project and use the bus lane but neither possible to use BRT too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Line_(Bangkok)
Look at the experience of Yellow Line of Bangkok Monorail, the passengers dropped sharply after the free trial period.
According to the Department of Rail, the number has dropped to an average of between 30,000 and 40,000 per trip between end stations since EBM started charging the passengers, compared to up to 92,000 passengers per trip recorded on June 30th, during the free trial period, which began on June 3rd.
Penang can't do this BRT because the road can't be redo due to the old buildings around. LRT construction might take another 6 years to complete and the jam in between the years would be a big problem for the residents on the island.
Part One
https://malaysiakusayang.blogspot.com/2023/06/penang-lrt-wisedom-or-doom-part-1.html
Part Two
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