Urban expressways

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What impressed me during my holiday visit to Kuala Lumpur last week are the urban expressways. There were so many of them. It seems they easily merge with each other to provide seamless traffic flow from one part of the city to another.

None of these existed when I first visited in 1969, not even in 1982. They started building these only in the late 90s.

Their flagship expressway leads to Malacca and Singapore from KL. I remember when we drove to Penang in 1969, there were no expressways and they didn’t even have the bridge to the island. We took a car ferry. But even then, I remember that the roads were well maintained.

Filipino traffic expert Rene Santiago told me NLEX and SLEX were built before any of Malaysia’s expressways. The Philippines, Rene said, had a head start.

In 1975, we had 128 kilometers of expressways. By 2000, the total length for the Philippines was 165 km but by then, Malaysia had already built 1,192 km. By 2025, Malaysia has expanded its expressway network to 5,000 km compared to our 626 km.

Manila LRT 1 opened in 1984 with 15 km. KL = 0. By 2004: Manila had 45 km vs KL’s 64 km. By 2025: Manila has 65 km, not counting the yet to be operational MRT7 (22km), while KL has 528 km. They have train service from the airport to the city center.

It is obvious our government, DPWH and DOTr were led by incompetent people who, from these numbers, were sleeping on their jobs. Natutulog sa pansitan.

I asked Rene how Malaysia could have done so much while we have done practically nothing. Rene thinks it is because Malaysia had the UK legacy of town planning, which they pursued and executed substantially.

On the other hand, we followed the USA model, with a twist: urban plans are great on paper. We have a law requiring a Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP), the primary, long-term blueprint that guides the physical development and management of a local government unit’s entire territory, including both land and municipal waters.

A CLUP is a document that materializes the local government’s vision for its land resources and allocates them among competing uses and sectors.  But these CLUPs are rarely followed. In NCR, the 20+ bay reclamation projects never entered into the 1975, 1998 and 2015 master plans.

Urban expressways around Kuala Lumpur have taken anywhere from two to 10+ years to complete, depending on complexity, phasing and right-of-way issues. And yes — right-of-way problems (squatters, acquisition disputes, compensation claims, community opposition) have been real factors in many projects, leading to delays, redesigns or phased openings. But nothing like what we have here.

Almost all expressways in Malaysia — including those in the Klang Valley/Kuala Lumpur area — have been built by private companies under concession (BOT/PPP) arrangements with the government rather than directly by the government.

This means, the private concessionaires finance, design, build, operate and maintain the expressways, and recoup costs through tolls, under supervision of the Malaysian Highway Authority (Lembaga Lebuhraya Malaysia).

We are talking about 14 expressways including a 9.7-km tunnel designed to reduce flash floods in central Kuala Lumpur by diverting excess rainwater, and providing a road tunnel to ease traffic congestion on the city’s southern approach roads.

When river flow exceeds a moderate threshold, floodwater is diverted into a lower bypass drain section of the tunnel. The upper road section stays open to vehicles, so traffic is not disrupted.

But when flows get higher, traffic is cleared from the road tunnel and the motorway section is closed. The tunnel is on standby to accept more water but may not yet be flooded.

Malaysia must have some very creative and technically savvy civil engineers to think of such an innovative infrastructure to address an actual need. This innovative approach helps both flood control and urban traffic flow in a built-up environment. They did a flood control project that works.

I am sure we have very professional civil engineers too but some of the best of them have been busy building infrastructure in the Middle East. Many of them left the country because they wanted to earn money the honest way.

Our DPWH engineers are more adept in making excuses for non-delivery of infrastructure or for the enormous delay in delivering what eventually turns out to be substandard projects.

The Malaysians also had ROW problems that didn’t stop them from delivering fantastic projects.

In the New Pantai Expressway, the Malaysians had to relocate 2000 squatters to new low-cost housing as part of the project’s implementation. Yet, they delivered the expressway within four years.

The other thing I like with KL’s expressways is how they weaved into what looks like forests, preserving the greenery. The urban planning of KL must have considered the need to have enough green spaces that are free of any concrete development.

Here, it is all concrete. Even BGC, which is supposed to be the better planned among the areas in Metro Manila, hardly has enough greenery to rest our tired urban eyes. BGC’s developers have maximized every inch of land they can monetize into condominiums and malls.

KL, and perhaps to a larger extent, Singapore, did the right things in keeping their urban areas as green as possible. Now it is too late for us. Hopefully, when the time comes to redevelop NAIA, there will be provisions requiring the developer to have at least half the area green.

Malaysia proved that the PPP concept works. Here, we have over regulated our PPP implementation so it takes too much time and money for proponents to get anything done. LRT-7 took ten years of scrutiny by NEDA and DOF before it could break ground.

This is how we have been overtaken by our neighbors. Lack of foresight, rotten politics and corruption to the max.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco