{"id":4889,"date":"2011-03-04T23:42:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T15:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/buletinonline.net\/v7\/index.php\/2011\/03\/mrt-runaway-train\/"},"modified":"2011-03-04T23:42:09","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T15:42:09","slug":"mrt-runaway-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/mrt-runaway-train\/","title":{"rendered":"MRT Runaway Train?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/buletinonline.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/tonypua.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"http:\/\/www.buletinonline.net\/http:\/\/buletinonline.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/tonypua.jpg\" style=\"float: right;\" \/><strong>Political-economic factors risk major cost-overruns and a failure to meet over-sized targets in the MRT rush-job<br \/><\/strong>Based on available and non-available information since the MRT project  was put up for public feedback, there have been strong concerns voiced  over its viability and the cost and benefits.  The public transport  advocacy group, TRANSIT has questioned the Land Public Transport  Commission (SPAD) forecast of 40,000 passengers per hour per direction  (pphpd) when the proposed 58 train sets to be purchased can only ferry a  maximum capacity of 24,000 pphpd.<\/p>\n<p> Concerns raised by residents at various proposed stations such as Taman  Tun Dr Ismail and Kajang pointed towards poor design and planning of the  stations to cope with managing traffic flow and volume.  S.  Piarapakaran, president of the Association of Water and Energy Research  Malaysia (Awer) found out from the EIA report that traffic studies have  yet to be carried out on the respective stations.<\/p>\n<p> Questions are also raised over the poorly integrated stations with other  existing public transport networks such the LRTs and bus terminals.  I  have raised criticisms on the fact that the MRT system is being forged  ahead without first reviewing the holistic public transport framework  where bus services form the other critical public transport pillar.<\/p>\n<p> Despite the fact that the project is only put up for feedback last  month, SPAD, the regulatory body and Syarikat Prasarana Bhd, the project  owner have already awarded the project to Gamuda-MMC joint venture as  the \u201cproject delivery partner\u201d and announced the fact that the tender  for the various sub-contract works will commence in April and awarded by  June 2011.<\/p>\n<p> All of the above and more, points towards the fact that the RM46 billion  MRT rush-job is a runaway train the Government has set in motion with  brakes already disabled, regardless of the obstacles in its path.  <\/p>\n<p> A study by Bent Flyvbjerg \u201cSurvival of the unfittest: why the worst  infrastructure gets built\u2014and what we can do about it\u201d published in the  Oxford Review of Economic Policy (2009) looked at 258  \u201cmega-infrastructure projects\u201d across 20 countries.  He found that rail  projects not only suffered from an average of 44.3% cost overrun, actual  passenger traffic is 51.4 per cent lower than forecast traffic on  average.<\/p>\n<p> In fact, the other statistics found are no less encouraging &#8211; 9 out of  10 of suffered from cost overruns; 84 per cent of rail passenger  forecasts are wrong by more than \u00b120 per cent; nine out of 10 rail  projects have overestimated traffic.<\/p>\n<p> He concluded that \u201ccost overruns in the order of 50 per cent in real  terms are common for major infrastructure, and overruns above 100 per  cent are not uncommon. Demand and benefit forecasts that are wrong by  20\u201370 per cent compared with actual development are common.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Political-economic factors risk major cost-overruns and a failure to meet over-sized targets in the MRT rush-jobBased on available and non-available information since the MRT project was put up for public feedback, there have been strong concerns voiced over its viability and the cost and benefits. The public transport advocacy group, TRANSIT has questioned the Land [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}