Sunday, April 19, 2009

KL - City of Cars

Ever wonder why traffic is getting worse in KL? Cars. Lots of them. Every year, 500,000 new cars is pumped into the system. Only 50,000 are commercially based vehicles. The rest are passengers type.

Last week in The Edge, a spokesman from IBM was trying to sell the concept of charging cars going into the city center, something which I really agree. The system mimics singaporean style traffic of having tolls going into the city center. By discouraging cars going into the town, hopefully, we would see more alternatives. One that I would like to see is more cycling.

The other day, I opted to cycle to KL sentral from cheras to meetup with a friend. I could have drive. But one thing that stuck in my mind was the jam I might have to endure just getting into city center. Not to mention parking. Cycling makes it easy. Since there's no jam, the time taken to get to your destination is almost always the same.

My friend was pretty surprised when I told her I got there by pedal power.

Another thing is oil. While oil is now pretty cheap, we have to learn to be less dependant on this finite resource. Try to google up peak oil, and you'll understand that our economic growth, food, transportation is heavily depended on oil. There's millions of us on this planet, and each one of is a consumer of oil, even if we don't own a car.

Everytime I cycled, at least I knew I could cut back on how much oil I have to consume.

Now, if only KL is like Copenhagen..


Copenhagen - City of Cyclists from Colville Andersen on Vimeo.

6 comments:

Simon said...

Just think how much training we could get in if we could commute to work on our bikes - I'd have 250k chalked up each week before I did a single spin class or weekend ride. Might be a bit sweaty in the office though.

yipwt said...

simon,

I am logging in the miles in cycling as training :)

You do get a bit sweaty, but can't help it in Msia's hot wheather.

cRAzYtoMatOmaN-D said...

if only the weather is like copenhagen and the there's proper bike lane throughout klang valley....sigh!

Keat Seong said...

kl n selangor need to have a better infrastructure for cyclist... ala our friendly neighbour down south Singapore...

Anonymous said...

Not safe for ladies, Yip. They become snatch thieves victims even on motorcycles. I do wish I could cycle more, but thinking of the crime rates in this country send shivers down my spine.

But my ex schoolmate the actress who acts in Talentime (plays the mother of Melur), she doesn't own a car! She cycles everywhere. Says that's how she keeps fit coz she hardly has the time to workout! :)

iamsyah said...

just came back from copenhagen, the bike lanes are very generous (the width of a car's). We rented bikes to go around, great stuff!!