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THE FATE OF GURNEY DRIVE

IN 1996 it was proposed to built the Penang Outer Ring Road. Approval by the state government followed in 1998. The scheme involves reclamation of  2.7 million square metres of land starting from Gurney Drive to the Esplanade.  One hundred hectares of the sea front will be developed into a tourist cum residential cum commercial complex which  will include a water theme park and an underwater world . 

The Consumers Association and the Friends of the Earth Organisation have appealed to the government to disapprove the project. SAM (Sahabat Alam Malaysia) is against the project because it will deprive the public of open space The proposal for a water theme park has shocked its president S M Idris The Gurney Drive sea front he points out is one of the few remaining public recreation areas on the island

Port authorities fear that this reclamation may cause erosion hurting the port. Port told The Sun (22.3.2000)  that proper environment impact studies should be made. Dr Chan Ngai Weng, USM hydrologist and an associate professor, told The Sun that wave energy will be directed elsewhere, that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) should be conducted. 

It is reported that fishermen have also expressed anxiety. Inshore fishermen Welfare Association's  P Balan told reporters that  they will be affected.  Gurney Drive he said is rich with belanak, kerapu, kedara and crabs
 

[Ed Note: The Penang Outer Ring Road - PORR - will be built by a private company Peninsula Metroworks SB  by an agreement to be signed with the Federal Government. It will be 17.8 km long and will cost RM1.02 billions.   EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) approval for PORR was approved in 1997. But the Gurney sea front reclamation needs a detailed EIA says the company proposing to build PORR. A project of this kind falls within the Town and Country Planning Act of  1976 by which public views and comments have to be sought. By the Rio Earth Summit Declaration of 1992 several countries of which Malaysia is one pledged to achieve sustainable development. The Seventh Malaysia Plan also has sustainable development as one of its objectives]

Second Link

     - A Reply 

I don't think anybody is implying that by increasing the number of ferries plying the straits will solve our traffic woes. I personally don't think that will happen until we stop making dated cars and selling them cheaply (so that we can use the sales figures as an indication of economic recovery.)

I believe Mr. Samuel is being naive when he thinks that building a second link to Penang from the mainland is NOT going to increase the net amount of cars in the island proper. In KL, various highways and toll ways were built to "smoothen" the flow of traffic through KL but the jams in KL got progressively worse over the years.

Below is an excerpt of an interview with Peter Drucker by Kevin Kelly of www.wired.com. Peter is talking about what will happen when the Internet world reaches maturity.

"What can we expect to happen because of these changes? Thirty years from now, the big cities may be dying very fast. Downtown office buildings have become dysfunctional. As information and ideas have become mobile, the kind of work that doesn't require contact with customers or contact with other professionals - in other words, 75 percent of the work in any organization - doesn't have to be done downtown. For 300-odd years we have had a continuing, occasionally interrupted real estate boom. It was slowed down by depression, but not stopped. That boom may be over for good."

If the observation above is even half way correct, it can mean that in the not too distant future, cities as we know it today may be very different in shape and structure. Perhaps the traffic flow in Penang will be reduced dramatically.

So why do we need to spend billions on second or third links if not to satisfy our ego? Instead we should investigate other ways and means to cope with and perhaps change the traffic patterns throughout Penang island.

Quite frankly Penang's population does not consist of car owners alone. I believe that there is a certain proportion of islanders who do not own or have convenient access to a car, van or bike. A fair proportion of these people belongs to the older generation who is literally scared witless whenever they try to cross a road in Penang nowadays. The sad part is that this older generation is the one who put the local government into power, election after election and paid the taxes to make Penang what it is today. Yet these are the very people who are going to MORE disadvantaged by the second link.

There is no central policy state-wide about the traffic problems facing Penang. Instead what we see proposed are stop gap measures to ease the flow of traffic. Why must we put up with increased traffic anyway? We should have a well thought out policy on traffic management; a time period to
implement it and funding put aside to do so. Instead what we have are announcements (pontifications?) of second links from Ministers who don't even live in Penang.

There should be sufficient buses plying routes going through population centres so that everybody is serviced. The bus drivers should be trained. They should know that the passengers are paying their wages, so they should be on time and polite to their passengers and drive properly. Not drive off when an elderly passenger is trying to get to an empty seat nor taking corners at high speed so that passengers slide off their seats to fall on the floor.

Car-pooling should be encouraged and perhaps an incentive scheme implemented for those who are willing to pick up passengers along the way. If there is a policy that no car can use the bridge unless there are two or more people in the car, we would immediately have a reduction of traffic
loading on the bridge by 30% or more.

If we increase the number of ferries and their frequency and at the same time improve the bus services on both sides of the straits, we may be able to delay the building of the second link. At the same time we could be reducing the traffic congestion on the island itself.

By widening the roads and building ring roads to link the various parts of the island to the exit points to the main land will improve traffic flow. By installing more pedestrian crossings, pedestrian footpaths, pedestrian flyovers with escalators will reduce the amount of pedestrian accidents. One of the most often quoted complaint from foreign visitors is that Penang is definitely NOT pedestrian friendly.

Can you imagine Penang Road - coming from Odeon Cinema to Burma Road - with automated pedestrian crossings at each cross road and only public transportation allowed to travel along it? It will immediately become the focus of the shopping renaissance in Penang. The pedestrian traffic will increase and that means more people shopping along that stretch. The downtown hotels will increase their occupancy and more tourists will come and shop in Penang. It will be like Orchard road without the traffic jam. A foreigner with money to spend can be encouraged to spend money in town if they don't wish to brave the dirty beaches and water in Telok Bahang. They can browse safely in town till the wee hours and know that there are buses to take them back to the beach front hotels. Not like now; where we punish these same tourists when they come to town to shop and they don't know when or where the last bus is departing from town and if they miss the last one it is an expensive trip back to Telok Bahang after 11:30 P.M.

The catalogue of the inadequacies of our public transport system in Penang is endless. The local government should be looking at spending a little of the proposed billions on updating the present system with immediate benefits to the populace instead of spending the billions to service only a percentage of the state's population, i.e. those who possess vehicular transport who live on the mainland but wishes to work in Penang island.

I say we should form some "Pedestrian Power" groups and get their candidates voted into the local government so the PPG can have a say in how the roads are managed. As my old PE teacher from high school used to say : Walking is good for the internal organs. So WALK ON !!

Tony Ooi
Penang
 

 The increase in traffic in KL cannot be directly attributed to the fact more highways were built. The increase in car ownership in the ensuing years would be responsible. Imagine all those cars without highways and you have a Bangkok.

 Peter Drucker's prediction on our urban future might or might not be true but we have to solve the problem at hand now and if the urban landscape changes in future and the highways are useless then so be it. The Taiping - Port Weld Railway had to be built then but is redundant now.

.That public transport has to be improved and bus drivers need to be better trained is not denied, but that really is quite irrelevant with whether the second link is built or not, as I don't think it
is a zero sum game.

 As to creating a pedestrian paradise in Penang again that really is a separate issue to be considered on its on merits and would not be relevant to whether a second link needs to be constructed, although I personally don't think people today are so keen on walking in the
hot sun to warrant converting Penang Road to a pedestrians mall as the younger generation which invariably forms the bulk of the shoppers and people hanging out seem to rather shop in air-conditioned comfort. Neither do we have the number of shops or tourists to make Penang Road an Orchard Road without traffic (which in itself is a telling remark, as even with their number of tourists and proliferation of shops and restrictive policies on vehicles did not make Orchard Road a pedestrian mall).

 The second link will help stimulate economic growth on the island and help with wealth and job creation, just as the Penang Bridge did. I don't see why only KL should benefit from improved infrastructure while we get precious little and when the same is proposed we then make a fuss. Agreed this development paradigm might not to everybody's liking but this is the paradigm we have today and until that changes  we cannot behave like Luddites.

Increased traffic annoys everybody not only old folks but to my mind complaining about it is just being elitist as in the past only a few could afford cars and the masses swatted it out in their bicycles and so there were no traffic jams. Now that more people can afford cars we all suffer
equally.

Tony's Spore style solutions are not magical as they seem as it involves rationing vehicle use based on ability the owners ability to pay which basically means less traffic but the only the rich drive, I don't see that being equitable or favourable to the poor. Again  rationing the Bridge to vehicles with more than 2 passengers would implicitly mean some penalty for those who don't comply, again giving rise to a means based scheme, and the same with car pooling as those who can afford would pay rather then bother to share their cars with strangers.

Pious platitudes that the public should do this or that with respect to traffic don't work unless there are incentives or penalties, but once that comes in to play the rich will pay and drive with no traffic problems and the rest of will take the bus. I for one prefer the egalitarian jam in Malaysia to creating a situation where the best selling car is a Mercedes.

At the end of the day the motivation of the persons who intend to build the link or the size of their egos should be secondary to whether the idea is of benefit to the majority.

Gerald Samuel

[Ed. note:  The state government has asked to be consulted. This is in response to the minister's statement that the project was government and that feed back from the public was not required ]
 
 

  For Gerald Samuel's original comment please turn to Issue No 2 of  The Penang File