But no! Right in the city centre, during peak hours, I hardly see many cars on the road. All cars which stopped at traffic lights will get to clear them in one go, and the lights actually switches pretty fast to cater to pedestrians. Where did all the traffic go? And trust me, their skyscrapers are just humongous!
And in the Tokyo suburbs (e.g., Seputeh or Petaling Jaya), most amazingly, the roads are tiny, often barely enough for 1 vehicle to pass through in their residential roads. Yet at the same time, the city generously allocates and cordon off a sizeable portion of the road for pedestrians and cyclists' use. Throughout my stay there, I've never seen these residential roads streaming with motor vehicles.
Yet in Petaling Jaya, many neighbourhood residential roads are becoming main access roads, while access roads have become thoroughfares, and highways such as LDP become massive car parks, especially during peak perids. And we don't have the population, its density and the skyscrapers to match cities like Tokyo or Singapore.
Very simply, the solution is really in creating and building an efficient public transportation system. And this unfortunately, is rather non-existent in Petaling Jaya. If you need to get from Taman Mayang to SS2, there is no option except taking a taxi or your own private vehicle.
In Tokyo, I've never had to wait longer than 5 minutes for any train, even during off-peak hours (didn't get a chance to try their bus system, especially since I'd seriously lack the language skills!)
Hence, if businessmen, developers, some politicians and civil servants are to argue that we need to develop Petaling Jaya further to boost our economy, raise income and wealth levels, I do not totally disagree. In fact, I would agree also with the fact that Petaling Jaya still have plenty of room to "develop" further, especially when contrasted against cities of the developed world.
However, as highlighted in my earlier post yesterday, all new (yet to be approved)
major developments must cease so that the city and the state can catch its breath and take stock of the cost of unplanned development, without the necessary mobility infrastructure in place. And as long as the various federal ministries in charge of public transportation do not get their act together and drastically reform and improve the current system, then development will unfortunately have to be limited to the low-rise horizontal sort, instead of the more profitable vertical sort.
