Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Capital, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 11, 2019 - November 17, 2019

I am not a morning person, I admit. You can ask any journalist in Malaysia and the chances are most of them are not morning people. We are owls. You can expect us to burn the midnight oil but very few of us can wake up at 6am and brave the traffic congestion.

Speaking of traffic jams, which the Klang Valley is notorious for, a survey conducted by the Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) found that 87.3% of Malaysians in the country’s most populous area do not carpool.

Don’t ask me why the organisation calls itself Cent-GPS rather than CGPS or something.

Of course, we don’t carpool! I am actually quite surprised that only 87.3% of motorists in the Klang Valley do not carpool, according to the findings of the survey. I would have thought that the number would be higher.

So, why don’t we working Malaysians carpool? But how can we? Most of us don’t even have the same postcode as our colleagues.

Generally, this is the result of workers being underpaid over the decades and developers building houses that are well beyond their reach.

I live in Shah Alam and work in Mutiara Damansara, which is a good 25km away. I can count on one hand how many of my colleagues live in my area. No, they live in even more far-flung areas such as Puchong, Sungai Buloh, Bukit Jalil and Cheras. Since we don’t live anywhere near each other and some of us don’t even work the same hours, how to carpool?

If I wanted to buy a property in one of the Damansaras (except Damansara Damai because it is not really Damansara, just a wannabe eager to join the clique), I would have to sell a kidney, and even that might not be enough.

But instead of dangling carrots in front of developers and lenders to encourage homeownership, the government has opted to lower the property price threshold for foreigners.

We really hope this will have positive spillover effects on the economy and everyone benefits.

Still, it is the average Malaysian who has to travel at least 30 minutes every day to and from work, braving horrendous traffic and tolls and parking fees.

The thing is, we shouldn’t even be talking about carpooling because that is not the solution to traffic congestion and the rising cost of living. What we should be talking about is the need for the government to invest more in public transport in big cities, especially in the Klang Valley.

But then again, the Cent-GPS survey also found that on average, 66% of drivers in the US do not carpool. The figure was 56% in Spain and an impressive 30% in Belgium.

I wonder how different the living conditions are in these countries and how the Belgians are succeeding at carpooling. Do they have to brave traffic jams every morning and evening? Do they live outside the city where they work?

Did you know that it takes almost two hours to travel by public transport from Padang Jawa in Shah Alam to Mutiara Damansara? Believe me, I’ve tried. You also have to change the mode of public transport twice, from a bus to KTM Komuter and then to MRT.

I am not a morning person and I often have to burn the midnight oil. So, whoever is like me but takes public transport is either very brave or very resilient.

As for the Belgians, maybe they are morning people who commute on an excellent public transport system.

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