Vehicles outnumber people in Malaysia
By Dawn Chan - June 9, 2022 @ 9:55pm
KUALA LUMPUR: The number of vehicles in the country has overtaken the human population, with an increase of at least a million vehicles annually since 2019.
Last year, there were 33.3 million registered vehicles nationwide versus the human population, which stood at 32.6 million, according to road safety expert Professor Dr Kulanthayan K.C. Mani of Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Of the 33.3 million registered vehicles, up to 47.3 per cent were cars; 46.6 per cent were motorcycles while 4.7 per cent were goods vehicles. The rest were buses, taxis, self-drive car rentals and others.
With the vehicle population growing rapidly compared to the human population, it is no wonder that traffic congestion is getting worse natiowide in recent months, he said.
Horror stories of motorists and their families stuck on the roads during the recent festive season and bizarrely, even during working weekdays have echoed widely on social media platforms.
Scores of people have complained of bad traffic and of being trapped in snaking congestion during Hari Raya Aidilfitri and throughout other festivities on highways and trunk roads.
During the recent long weekend, which coincided with the start of the school holidays, one motorists lamented the eight-hour journey to Ipoh from Kuala Lumpur, which would usually take half the time.
Even the usual morning and evening peak hour traffic seemed to have worsened after Malaysia entered the transition phase into endemicity from April 1 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr Kulanthayan said his observation on the booming vehicle registration over the past few years until 2021 led him to believe that it was the prime contributor to the congestion in most parts of the country.
The country's population, he said, was recorded at 32.5 million in 2019 and increased between 300,000 to 400,000 annually, bringing it to about 32.6 million in 2021.
"What is surprising here is that the vehicle population in 2019 was 31.2 million. Subsequently, it increased by one million every year. In 2021, it was registered at 33.3 million.
"For the first time ever, in 2021, the trend of vehicle population outpaced the human population. Over all these years, it has always been the reverse.
"The vehicle population now is high. If this trend continues yearly where vehicles are rising to the tune of one million, then we are going to face even more horrendous traffic congestion," he told the New Straits Times.
With those data, Dr Kulanthayan said it was only fair that he took the wait-and-see approach and observe whether the traffic congestion would sizzle down after the weeklong school holiday.
"It was common for traffic to be clogged during festivities and peak hours and then it returns to normal. But looking at the situation now, it is beyond that. Hopefully it will ease.
"If it does not, it means we have a clear cut issue of the overwhelming number of registered vehicles in the country," said Dr Kulanthayan, who is attached to the university's Department of Community Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences.
DOMINO EFFECT
Dr Kulanthayan, who is also the Global Alliance of NGOs for Road Safety board of directors chairman, said the pandemic had brought about domino effects on traffic conditions.
He said another possible reason of the soaring number of vehicles was the government's introduction of the automotive sales and services tax exemption in June 2020 as part of the National Economic Recovery Plan (Penjana) stimulus package.
The scheme has since been extended thrice to June 30 this year, which will bethe last chance for people to make purchases for vehicles of their choice.
While he lauded such a move to assist the automotive industry, which was adversely affected due to the travel ban to curb the Covid-19 spread, Dr Kulanthayan said such sweet deals enticed the people to buy vehicles, which they may have not needed. He said people did not want to miss the irresistible offer and some may have planted the idea to others to upgrade to new cars.
"There could have been graduates who had no intention of buying cars, but they did it because of peer pressure or pursuasion from friends and family because they can save money with the tax exemption.
This could have led to an increase in vehicle purchase as there is an external push for people to buy cars.
"Now, we are seeing even more vehicles on the road and this could contribute to traffic jams. That is why you see this happening nationwide and not just in the Klang Valley.
"The pandemic had also caused some to lose income and they had resorted to taking on several jobs which means they are travelling multiple times a day and spending more time on the road. Some may have taken up p-hailing and e-hailing jobs, which was in demand and allowed during the Movement Control Order period.
"Money-strapped families may also have an extra family member going out to work now to sustain their household, what more with the rising prices of food. Now they are forced to work so it adds on to the extra people making travels.
"Whatever work they embark on, it attracts more travel and the use of vehicles," he added.
Some school van and bus transporters, who had lost businesses during the pandemic, have chosen to stay on with their new jobs instead of going back to ferrying children, shared Dr Kulanthayan.
This, he said, as well as Covid-19 precautions, had led to parents taking charge by sending their children to schools and this equates to more vehicles on the road instead of previously when one bus loaded with 30 students headed for a school.
People, he said, are still afraid of exposing themselves to Covid-19, and this saw a lower volume of ridership in public transportation compared to the pre-pandemic times which further pushed the use of private transportation alongside the reduced number of e-hailing drivers who had returned to their old jobs.
Another factor that boosted the use of private vehicles could be the recent breakdown of rail services, which led to the lack of confidence towards the system.
He said following those incidents, many people felt that there was simply no alternative mode of transportation other than to drive.
RESOLVING TRAFFIC WOES
To resolve congestion issues, Dr Kulanthayan urged the government to refrain from building more highways or add more lanes to the existing roads because it would not solve traffic congestion because of the supplies-attract-demand theory, which is when there are more vehicles on the road and people would buy more cars.
He expressed that he was also not fond of increasing more lanes on the road as traffic congestion usually happens at bottlenecks areas where vehicles reduce speed to merge and that subsequently slows down the flow.
"That is not the right method. I do not recommend the building of more highways as we already have many of them. The government should be managing the demand instead. The primary move is to shift the funding and invest in the public transportation system. That is the way forward.
"It is the government's duty to provide public transportation and when they do that, it is best to channel more to rail-based public transportation and we also need road-based public transportation for 'first and last mile' connectivity.
"However, there should be more rail-based public transportation because it is much safer compared to road-based transportation due to the presence of various types of vehicles on the road. Rail crash incidences are very low.
"Rail-based public transportation has no congestion, no issues with punctuality, relieves people of the stress of driving and encourages productivity during the commute. People need to understand that road-based public transportation like buses is the safest mode of transport on the road. Our crash statistics, not just last year, but dating back to three decades, showed that the least contributor of fatalities is the bus.
"Last year, bus drivers and passengers contributed 0.04 per cent of total road fatalities. It was about 0.03 per cent in the previous years.
"This should attract us to move towards public transportation and whether it is road or rail, both are much safer compared to other types of vehicles.
"There is no doubt that people complain about public transportation, but we must understand there are benefits too in terms of safe travel. It liberates one from the pressure of driving as well as the hassle of looking for a carpark," he said.
INDUSTRIES COULD DO MORE
He also opined it takes a concerted effort from all parties, not just the government and the people, but also industries to show their support for public transportation especially those with large numbers of staff.
Industries, he felt, could do more by providing transport to their employees or giving travel pass subsidies or incentives for taking buses, rail services or others.
Industries directly telling staff of these benefits would encourage them to make the shift towards public transportation as compared to when the government tells it, he said. He further suggested for employers to encourage carpooling to workplaces.
Dr Kulanthayan recommended that to ease congestion, industries could also weigh the reintroduction of the work-from-home policy on a rotational basis to avoid the further congestion of roads.
He said if the policy had worked at the height of the pandemic, he saw no reason for it not to continue.
He said the longer time spent on the road could possibly lead to low productivity due to exhaustion of driving, while massive jams and possibility of minor crashes would delays in their presence at the office.
"If they are working from home, they could contribute more effectively. It is stress-free and they can concentrate better. Perhaps industries can consider enforcing the policy on a rotational basis as it should be not an entirely work-from-home concept.
"If every employer decides on this way of work, we may just be able to reduce up to 20 per cent of traffic at any time. This is one way we can contribute to taking vehicles off the road which many are single car drivers. It also frees up parking space," he said, citing that it was also best to embrace online services, such as banking, to deter any sort of unnecessary travelling.
The people could also play their role by planning their journey ahead by possibly factoring in public transportation opportunities when they use private vehicles such as driving to a rail station and taking the train to head to their destination, he said.
He urged Malaysians to make behavioural changes by walking more towards their destinations that are within a reasonable distance with proper pedestrian infrastructure in place.
He said the thought of having to walk has the ability to make one cut off public transportation completely, but there was a need to reach out to a group of people who had never tried the system.
"We have more people who have never ridden on a bus or rail and we must find ways to introduce and encourage them to use it. They need to be shown the system because it is natural for one to be worried and scared of something they have not tried. We can bank on our individual capacity to make them feel confident about the system, tell them the risk are low so that we can boost such ridership.
"Tell them about the My50 Unlimited Travel Pass. Awareness should be heightened by the government, and the people.
"Let it be known that every public transportation has its own benefits. Then only I feel there will be change in the way we travel using public transportation," he said, adding there should be more feeder buses to combat congestion.
