3 reasons WHY the GOVERNMENT should improve PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION!!!! by Gecko

....and not create a new national car brand.

I know, I know. You’re all probably tired of hearing “new government” this and “new government” that but this article is to express some opinions of mine that - although technically I am a nobody - could attract public agreeing or major agreeing, whichever one.

Now, I am all for a new national car, since Proton got sold to China but to be honest, don’t you think that everybody is good on cars? Look at the state of our traffic jams every day.

There has never been a day where I am on Federal Highway, on my way to college, ready to bang my head on the dashboard because Malaysian’s tak pandai bagi way and guna signal. No matter what time it is in the morning on a weekday, whether you go out at 7 o’clock sharp or that one day where you accidentally woke up late because of the too many rounds of RuPaul’s Drag Race the night before and you leave at 7.15 am, you’re gonna be stuck in jam, regardless of the highway you use.

Even though my mother does send me to college by car every morning, I do take public transport on a daily basis. To get home from college, to go and lepak with my friends and to go to my part-time job. It’s convenient, to say the least (or depending on the area that I stay in) and I do save money since our trusty buddy, RapidKL has provided specialty cards for students that gives me 50% off on my expenses (also available for senior citizens and people of different abilities! Sponsored by Rapi-- I love RapidKL!)

However, as a daily public transport user, I can agree that our public transport system isn’t the best in the world but at the same time not the worst. She has space to grow and improve, it’s just that maybe, the government should take a look into her. (Yes, I am fully aware that the government is still new, not even a hundred days in the system yet and they’ve got a big load in their hands because Uncle Jibby shat everywhere but this is me stating my opinions, I’m not really demanding shit)

1. For the love God, can we get a better bus system?

See, when I go home from being out, I take two buses; the RapidKL bus and the SMART free bus (I live in Shah Alam). My biggest pet peeve is when the buses don’t provide schedules on when or where they are going. For instance, the RapidKL bus that goes from Glenmarie to Giant Seksyen 13 is pretty straight forward, that’s the only route. The problem is that there aren’t enough buses and their timing is pretty ridiculous.

And then there is the free bus, which is darn cool because I don’t pay for the fares and I just go in and sit down. Hella cool. But the problem is similar to the RapidKL bus, there is no schedule on when the bus is coming and there aren’t enough of them.

Imagine my daily experience using them: I get off the LRT with no problem, go down and if I’m lucky that day, I get on the bus immediately. If I am not lucky, it comes in two situations. First situation, the bus has just arrived to the station but I need to wait an hour for the driver to have a break and I sit there until I’m exhausted waiting to go home. The second unfortunate situation is when the bus had just left and I didn’t get in on time, so then I have to wait for TWO HOURS for the next bus.

Sometimes I get so frustrated that I pull out my phone and call for a Grab, though 17 ringgit is the Grab fare from Glenmaire station to my home - when in fact if I used Grab at 7 am where there is less traffic, it is 10 ringgit. *17 ringgit is not the surge price, it’s just the price at 3 pm.

I am a broke college student, ffs! I would rather spend 50 sens on the RapidKL bus along with the free bus instead spending 10% off my weekly allowance on a Grab car and get bombarded with creepy questions by the Grab driver on my way home. While I do pity the hard work that these bus drivers have to go through all the time, I hate that most of them take advantage of the leniency from the big bosses. It has been like this before SPAD was dismantled by the way.

They drive away suka hati mak diaorang and most of the time they ignore those who are waiting for them because they want to drive faster - speaking of driving fast, safety precautions are never taken seriously. Bus drivers drive like mad men and brake at the last minute. I constantly hold on to my dear life while riding on the bus.

I’m only writing from my experience in my area but trust me, I have friends who come from all corners of Klang Valley and Selangor and they say the same thing about the buses in their area too.

The Ministry of Transportation should really review our bus systems. It’s not at all hard to provide a steady schedule of their arrival and departure time. Even if, let’s say the bus is late 10 minutes, I would still feel safe knowing there is a schedule because then I can estimate my travelling instead of just blinding riding around.

2. Sexual Harassment on Public Transportation

I can sense that any girl reading this was waiting for this issue to be on the list. Honey, I’ve been wanting to say a lot of shit about the tons and tons of sexual harassment that happens frequently on the LRT, MRT, Rapid Bus, KTM or whatever and cases are mostly unreported.

Let’s take a very recent case that happened to a classmate of mine. I won’t mention any names but she and a bunch of her friends were just riding the LRT casually until at one of the stations, her friends pulled her out of the train coach only to tell her that some creep inside the same coach was staring at her and had whipped out his penis.

This is one of the many cases of sexual harassment that has happened in the LRT in 2018. I have not counted in the other cases that happened in the years prior because why? Too many. Too many sexual harassment on public transport cases has happened and very little actions have been taken.

Another case was when a poor girl in the LRT was just minding her own business when a pervert started grinding against her backside with his penis exposed. Instead of helping her, the onlookers on the train simply laughed at the girl. She quickly fought back and went out to the next station, which was Masjid Jamek, to make a report to the staffs. Guess what they did; laughed at her too and asked why she was wearing such tight clothing. They didn’t proceed with the report anywhere. It wasn’t until she made a proper police report and warned other people on social media, the company was quick to sack the staffs on duty that day and apologize on behalf of their behaviour.

Okay, let’s break down the situations and solutions. In my honest opinion, I think that recently RapidKL has been very good at handling sexual harassment seriously. I don’t know whether it’s because they had a change of management or they are shit-scared of their image being ruined but at least they handled the cases the real way. Immediately after dozens of harassment cases were reported, they set up a patrol team at every station of all the lines to monitor harassment. That’s why since the start of the year, those who ride the LRT daily like me, have seen a bunch of police officers at all the stations.

But I feel like with the government’s aid, more steps to a safer journey for women on public transportation can be done. For example, even though I hate riding the KTM, the company has done a great measure by adding in a Ladies’ Coach. From time to time, I see one or two guys in these special coaches, either they are uneducated or unaware, whatever the reason is but at least the method has worked...in some ways if we actually implement it strictly.

I did a survey assignment a couple semesters ago where I asked these women who use the KTM about their opinions of the ladies’ coach and I’d say 95% felt safe using these coaches while the other 5% just didn’t know shit. When I asked the men, 50% understood its purposes, 45% were meninists who thought the ladies’ coach was unfair, and 5% thought I was from TV3.

The ladies’ coach is significant in preventing sexual harassment from happening. It’s already a bloody red flag to society that although there are women who have sexually harassed people, most of the harassers are men and society has enabled them to harass freely.

But nonetheless, while most of our public transportation are owned privately, they are provided to the public. I feel like because of the logic being actually there in our new government, if they can actually pakat dengan these companies, big steps can be taken to entirely prevent sexual harassment. Not just a RM500 fine, but an actual punishment. If society is not gonna teach men to stop harassing, then let the government teach them a lesson to never harass ever again.

3. Build more lines...outside of Klang Valley and the usual areas of Selangor

Yes, the MRT has connected us to the foreign lands of Kajang and in a few years, Puchong and Putrajaya. But I feel like when we say “evolve the country”, most of the “pembangunan” happens in KL. We neglect the outside states and then call them poor when our old government made sure to maintain them in poverty (for corrupted reasons la, so I won’t mention any of that in this article...maybe soon to come).

If I am not mistaken Penang has a Rapid bus system but wouldn’t it be nice if there was an LRT or MRT line that connect Georgetown to Batu Ferringi - or better yet, one that could connect all the way to Kuala Kangsar.

There is a line to be built soon in Sarawak, I guess that can be a start. Though I do hope that our new government doesn’t stop there and start building up other states too. Providing good PT (public transportation) is probably the greatest but also the safest start to evolving a state. Because when you enable easy access to a certain area, communication comes with it. Therefore it creates a boundary-less way of communicating with one another.

You can connect to someone all the way in Kelantan through social media, but often times communicating with someone physically is better than communicating with someone through a computer or phone screen.

I could go on and on with reasons to prioritize PT but my editor-in-chief will likely ask me to write something shorter because unfortunately humans have an attention span shorter than a goldfish’s. Take in consideration that these are just my opinions as someone who relies on public transportation to get to her destinations. You might or might not share the same views but these are just fruits for thoughts.

Okay bye bye love you,