This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on July 14, 2025 - July 20, 2025

Encouraging Malaysians, especially those living in major urban areas, to use public transport has been an ongoing effort by successive governments, both due to the massive fuel subsidy bill and traffic congestion.

However, these efforts often came with contradictory policies that in the end jeopardised the objective of getting more Malaysians to use public transport.

A recent comment made by Datuk Ng Suee Lim, chair of the Selangor Local Government and Tourism Committee, that the state government was looking at increasing the parking ratio at transit-oriented developments (TODs) from one unit to one vehicle (1:1) to one unit to two vehicles (1:2) is one such contradiction.

This is because the new ratio will defeat one of the core objectives of a TOD, which is to promote public transport usage through the integration of rail networks and pedestrian links. TODs are mixed-used developments located within a 400m radius of a mass public transport station.

Ng was spot-on in noting that a significant number of serviced apartment buyers and tenants were professionals and that dual-income households often owned more than one vehicle.

However, TODs should not be catering solely to buyers and tenants with more than one vehicle per household. Instead, these should act as a catalyst for more egalitarian urban development in Malaysia, where public transport, not private vehicles, is the primary mode of commute.

The federal government has already spent tens of billions of ringgit — and continues to do so — on providing and upgrading the country’s public transport system, especially within the Klang Valley. However, infrastructure spending alone cannot change behaviour that has become entrenched over the decades.

We marvel at major global cities where one can walk and take efficient public transport for the daily commute. Sure, these cities have invested billions of dollars in providing world-class public transport for their citizens — efforts that our government has been emulating through the development of the mass rapid transit and light rail transit systems.

However, a crucial part of creating a pedestrian-friendly city is the policy of discouraging private vehicle use, particularly in areas where public transport is efficient and sufficient.

Perhaps, we should take a leaf out of the book of those transport-efficient cities.

Certainly, increasing the parking ratio at TODs would not be in their playbook.

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