RTS Link: What JB can learn from Penang and Kuching

“People forget that travel time starts from home,” Ngui said. “The LRT stations are far from where people live.”

The alignment hugs the industrial and commercial areas of Penang Island’s east coast without any stations in the dense residential areas of Air Itam, Farlim and Paya Terubong – where Ngui lives – in the interior.

Local engagement with the LRT project suggests that a feeder bus service will be introduced, but “it has not yet been confirmed”.

“Feeder buses cannot be an afterthought,” Ngui stressed.

Aside from Penang having just 232 buses in both the island and mainland, many popular routes have also been axed, including those to the industrial zone and botanical gardens, forcing many to resort to driving or rely on ride-sharing services to move around.

Bus operator Rapid Penang said it is difficult to add more buses because of the lack of permanent bus lanes, meaning buses have to compete with private cars and other vehicles on the narrow roads.

Like Penang, Johor Bahru’s bus service is also relatively limited for a fast-growing metropolitan area. There are only 241 buses serving the city through the federally funded bright pink BAS.MY and the state-operated Bas Muafakat Johor.

This is despite Johor Bahru and its surrounding metropolitan area having a population comparable to Penang’s (2.8m), at around 2.4 million people.

Instead, the government is looking at autonomous rapid transit (ART) as a solution to Johor Bahru’s traffic woes.

An ART is essentially a tram that runs on rubber tyres on the road, and is often sold as a cheaper and quicker alternative to a light rail for cities that do not want to build full rail infrastructure. But, like buses, it risks adding to the traffic snarl if it is not given priority or separated from regular traffic.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced in May that the federal government had approved an elevated ART proposal to support the RTS, which has the capacity to serve 10,000 commuters per hour. Meanwhile, Johor Menteri Besar Onn Hafiz Ghazi said the ART could be ready by 2030 at the earliest.

While Johor Bahru’s ART plan is still being drawn up, across the South China Sea, Kuching is preparing to launch its own system.

Like Johor Bahru, the Sarawak capital has grown into a car-dependent, low-rise metropolitan area where many residents live in outlying suburbs and commute into older commercial and administrative cores.

Instead of copying Kuala Lumpur’s rail template, Sarawak is betting heavily on the ART to solve its traffic woes, while also making a statement by powering the network with hydrogen-powered Chinese-made vehicles.

The Kuching Urban Transportation System (KUTS), scheduled to begin pilot operations by the end of 2026, consists of three lines covering the city, its suburbs and nearby satellite towns. The Blue Line, running south-east towards Kota Samarahan, is expected to be the first to open, and many are hoping it will help ease what has become a notorious traffic jam there.

“We call it ‘Jamarahan’,” Kuching resident Jerome Liew told ST, using the term locals coined for the infamous traffic jam on the route between Kota Samarahan and the capital city.

Aside from existing housing areas, the KUTS will also have to serve new townships as well as Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, one of the biggest trip generators along the Samarahan corridor.

Sarawak’s novel approach, billed as among the first full-scale hydrogen-powered ART systems outside of China, has also raised questions over whether the technology can deliver the reliability commuters need.

However, Liew, who is a public transit advocate, said that something needs to be done today to address the traffic congestion, rather than let it fester.

“I wish it was a full rail system, but we have to accept what has been announced,” he said.

“We are cautiously optimistic, but we will still complain.”

For transport planners, the challenge is not merely to build more lines, but also to understand the different ways people move through each city.

Speaking to ST, urban planning expert Amelia Neoh of Terracity Consultancy based in Penang said planners need to move beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and instead localise transport planning to the needs of each area.

In Johor Bahru, that means looking beyond Bukit Chagar and the RTS terminus, and accounting for commuters from suburbs such as Bukit Indah and Iskandar Puteri.

“While pedestrian movement in the city centre is very high in volume compared with places like Bukit Indah, these areas also have very high commuting intensity, especially among people who live in Johor and work in Singapore,” Neoh said. “That means the approach has to be different. The keyword here is localisation: localising the analysis, while also customising solutions that respect the realities of each area.”

The same applies to Penang and Kuching, where new rail and ART systems will have to serve not just traffic corridors, but actual human journeys from homes to stations, workplaces and schools, she added.

Neoh said transport modelling too often accounts for vehicles, rather than people.

“But it is the movement of people that should shape the solution,” she said.