By Rajiv Rishyakaran, Bukit Gasing State Assemblyman

With the recent reply to the media on Kidex’s traffic impact assessment (TIA), Minister of Works Fadillah Yusof has more or less confirmed that Kidex is being proposed solely to deal with the rising volume of traffic on the LDP (Lebuhraya Damansara Puchong) and that it is not to deal with or ease the congestions of the local PJ main roads, especially near the heart of the Petaling Jaya city center.

In fact, if the Minister were to look at the TIA carefully (mind you, this is the TIA submitted by Kidex and not produced by any of us), not only that the overall traffic volume in the 43 main roads in Petaling Jaya reduce by only 3%, but certain key mainroads in Petaling Jaya increase in traffic volume due to the contruction of Kidex based on the current proposed alignment.

Roads like Jalan Sultan at the heart of Petaling Jaya will see an increase in traffic volume of 58%. Another key road, Jalan Barat, which is the access between the city and Federal Highway,which is already congested, will see its traffic rise by 35% with the Kidex highway proposed design.

Kidex is a not a sustainable solution to ease LDP’s congestion. For as long as we don’t fix the public transport system, the quantity of cars on all our roads, including the LDP, will continue to rise year on year. If pubic transport doesn’t improve, after 10 years of building Kidex, there would be another proposal to relieve traffic on both Kidex and LDP. When will this end?

Minister Fadilah, there has to be a paradigm shift. Spend RM2.4bil not on buidling the highway, but on public transport. What’s our solution you ask? We’ve presented that, very publicly, that the Kidex corridor be changed from a highway to a rail line, where we can connect 4 existing rail lines, namely the MRT Line 1, Kelana Jaya LRT Line, Ampang LRT Line & the KTM Komuter line.

There is also a very important need to provide more buses to all the existing rail stations, to maximize the usage of our rail stations. That also enables people to actually get to and fro the rail stations that we do have and are under construction within the proposed corridor of Kidex.