Penang Watch

RE: Cabinet agrees to new fare structure for RapidKL

It is interesting to know that the recent decision by the Cabinet Commitee to withdraw the RapidKL operations subsidy was made at the same time that a court case that same subsidy was still pending. You may recall the lawsuit announced by Metrobus in March 2008. Metrobus named the CVLB as a defendant and indicated in the court proceedings that the CVLB had breached their own regulations by allowing RapidKL to offer a lower fare than the other operators. The court case was to be mentioned in late April, but I presume it still pending. In any case, the Cabinet Committee has effectively decided on the court case in favour of Metrobus.

Friday July 4, 2008(Star)
Town councils should provide bicycle lanes

I READ with much interest the recent suggestion put forward by a member of the Kuantan local council to have bicycle lanes to encourage people to cycle in times like these, (The Star, July 1).

I want to take this matter further; I suggest that bicycle lanes be made compulsory by all town councils. At the very least, we can encourage students to cycle to schools.

Cars are clogging the roads every morning and afternoon when schools start or dismiss. The reason why parents are forced to send their children to school in their cars is that cycling is not safe even in smaller towns like Batu Pahat in the absence of bicycle lanes.

After the fuel hike the Government was insisting loudly that bus fares won't follow suit. But now the Cabinet has approved a new fares structure-without any details, which is said to conform to CVLB regulations. Isn't the current structure also conform to the CVLB's regulations? Passengers have reason to fear for the worst-both in KL and Penang!

As pointed out by Penang Watch before both PORR and Monorail projects are privatised-so the contractors need to source the fund themselves. Nothing should be coming out from the Federal govt-except some preliminary studies which should have been done before. Since the PM insist that the 2 projects are shelfed on the ground of costs to the Federal govt-then where are the money going to? To the privatised contractors -possibly because the crony contractors simply are not credit-worthy to make any loan from the banks? The plot has thickened- some MPs should start posing this questions to the Parliament to seek clarification. In this report below the PM even confirmed another nightmare for these `privatised' projects: the costcan be revised midway! So what was the contract for?

July 03, 2008 18:00 PM      

Govt Urged To Establish Dedicated Public Transport Research Centre

By Syed Azwan Syed Ali

KUALA LUMPUR, July 3 (Bernama) -- The government should establish a dedicated research centre to enhance the quality of the public transport sector in the country, an expert said.

Prof Dr Abdul Rahim Md Nor, a professor of Human Geography at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), said coming up with a public transport quality index and a public transport cost index should be among its top priorities.

Is it possible for a contract price of a construction to go up after the contract is signed? Apparently it is `yes' in Malaysia-in the case of the 2nd Penang Bridge. It seems to suggest an incredible level of `protection' given to the builder UEM, paradoxically a GLC. While money goes arounddifferent hands of the government the beneficiaries are switched...