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From Wan Agyl Wan Hassan
Despite years of investment, political rhetoric, and masterplans, Malaysia’s public transport modal share has barely budged, stagnating at around 20%.
When a disappointed transport minister Loke Siew Fook recently reiterated this figure , I believe many of us in the policy and planning community felt a sense of déjà vu. The number itself isn’t the issue.
What is far more troubling is the persistent misreading of why we are stuck at this figure, and why this is not a failure of public behaviour, but a direct result of policy contradictions and governance failures that have long been left unaddressed.
On the surface, it may appear that Malaysians are simply too wedded to their cars. But the truth runs deeper. The choices people make are shaped by the environment – in ours, all signals point toward private vehicles as the most rational option.
While we have long claimed to prioritise public transport, our national policies tell a different story.
The government’s fuel subsidy cost in 2024 is expected to be around RM52.8 billion for all subsidies, with significant savings from diesel subsidy rationalisation contributing to this reduction but, still, it’s a lot, which makes driving artificially cheap.
At the same time, we continue to promote national car ownership through accessible financing schemes and road expansion and new highway projects, while public transport operators, especially in the bus sector, struggle with underfunding, low fares, and inconsistent service levels.
This contradiction is embedded in the system. On one hand, we announce multi-billion ringgit rail projects and cite sustainability goals in our National Transport Policy. On the other hand, we allow the cost of driving and parking in city centres to remain low, creating no real disincentive for private car use.
Without coherent signals from the state, both carrot and stick, public transport will remain a secondary, reluctant choice rather than a first option.
Access to the system is another massive hurdle. Malaysia’s public transport network is still deeply inadequate in its integration and first-mile-last-mile accessibility.
Park-and-ride facilities are limited, overcrowded, and poorly planned. Commuters who do not live within walking distance of a transit rail station are often left to rely on infrequent feeder buses or unsafe pedestrian paths. Meanwhile, commercial parking in city centres remains widely available and affordable. This sends a clear message: if you have a car, the system is built for you. If you don’t, be prepared for inconvenience.
The reality on the ground reflects a broader failure in urban planning. Despite repeated calls for transit-oriented development, most of our city expansion continues to sprawl outward, favouring low-density, car-dependent models.
Even in areas with rail access, high-rise condominiums often lack walkable paths to stations or are separated by highways, fences, or commercial blocks. The last-mile is not just a transport challenge, it is a design and planning failure. And these failures are often baked into our local authority systems, where development approvals are governed by land interests rather than mobility outcomes.
Perhaps the most under-discussed casualty in this system is our bus network. Once the backbone of urban mobility, the bus system has been allowed to deteriorate over time due to fragmentation, lack of enforcement, and chronic underinvestment. Services are irregular, routes are outdated, and the lack of real-time information reduces public confidence.
The consolidation of operators under Prasarana failed to deliver significant service improvements, and local bus services outside Klang Valley remain rudimentary or absent. In any functional transport system, buses serve as vital feeders to mass transit. Without them, MRT stations serve narrow corridors rather than citywide populations.
This stagnation isn’t unique to Malaysia, but what makes our case more frustrating is how avoidable much of it is.
Cities like Seoul, Singapore, and even Bogotá have shown what can be achieved with bold, coordinated reforms.
Seoul’s overhaul of its bus system included dedicated lanes, real-time monitoring, and fare integration across modes, creating seamless journeys that people trust. Singapore constrained vehicle ownership through the Certificate of Entitlement system, raised parking costs, area road pricing and invested heavily in high-frequency rail and bus services, all governed by a single, integrated agency.
These are not just engineering or budgetary decisions; they are political choices to prioritise people over cars.
Malaysia has not yet made those choices. We continue to spend disproportionately more on highway infrastructure than on maintaining and expanding quality public transport. We do not hold local councils accountable for urban forms that undermine walkability. We do not implement serious measures to discourage car usage, nor do we protect the financial sustainability of public transport operations.
To change this, we need to treat the public transport modal share not as a public failure, but as a mirror reflecting our policy values. If we want this figure to move beyond 20%, we need to align our policies, pricing signals, planning laws, and operational agencies toward one unified goal: making public transport the default, not the fallback.
This means rationalising fuel subsidies in parallel with strengthening urban transit. It means putting in place a real public service obligation framework to sustain and expand bus services. It means building walkable urban environments with transit-oriented demand as a legal requirement, not a voluntary option. And it means taking bold steps to regulate and price private car usage in urban centres; not just through enforcement, but through integrated urban governance.
Until we take these steps, we must stop expressing surprise at our stagnant modal share. Because the system is not broken, it’s delivering exactly what it was built to deliver: a car-dependent society. To deliver something different, we must first decide to build differently.
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Wan Agyl Wan Hassan is the founder and CEO of MY Mobility Vision, a transport think tank.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
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