Just when the government announced its decision to withdraw subsidies from RapidKL, it also announced in the same breath that there will be a one-stop agency to regulate public transport to take over from the 13 or so unwieldy assortments of departments/little Napoleons which currently hold the various wheels of the Malaysian public transport system.

The idea, on the face of it, seems to suggest an advantage in simplifying the hitherto complex maze surrounding public transport. However, it raises various other issues. Is this going to create an extra bureaucracy and more little Napoleons? Isn’t this over-centralising the bureaucracy while most city transports in the world are only regulated at the city or state levels?

Also, if the personnel are drawn from the same (old) stock, how are the problems of inefficiencies and political interference going to be addressed?

It needs to be recalled that the CVLB (Commercial Vehicles Licensing Board) was transferred from the Transport Ministry to the Entrepreneurs Development Ministry due to political rather than efficiency considerations. The transfer typified the kind of political expediency which cost public transport users significantly in terms of efficiencies and capacities.

Now that another departmental revamp is being considered, the government of the day should take it seriously so as to ensure that the passengers are to benefit in the end of the day.

To start with, we need to look at how the various pieces of the public transport jigsaw don't fit together. Apparently the transport `pie' had been split among many parties due to numerous competing demands on Malaysian transport. These issues should be harmonised or else the expected fractures will happen and the passengers will suffer. And they did too, badly.

Some contradictions are obviou. The RTD's mission to regulate traffic rules has been compromised by drivers' who are ‘politically protected’ (the CVLB seldoms takes action against these errant operators/drivers). The result? Most public buses are not sent for inspections and thus degenerate in no time. A

Then the national car project, started in 1980s to kickstart Malaysia's `indigenous heavy industry', seemed to justify a deliberate sidelining of public transport development for decades after that. Then when billions are found to improve public transport (and incidentally feed into some political cronies' mega-project hunts) these lush funds were poured into the LRTs - a non-mass transit solutions for the national capital only. There was some improvement in public transport ridership - but not of the cost-effective or integrated type.

There is thus a dire need to establish the priorities in transport policies at the national level and devolve the licensing and enforcement to city/state levels. What needs to be centralized or more relevantly, integrated, is the planning of overall policies and directions for public transport development nationally. Do away with the confusing and misguided competition between private and public transportation - this doesn’t happen in other countries which excel in both.

Do away with the use of public transport to serve entrepreneur development – or else we will be allowing an essential and safety-conscious service to be handled by money-minded, to-hell-with-safety crony operators. As if we haven’t already lost enough lives to it. Entrepreneur development needs to be addressed separately to do justice to these two separate important policy demands and to avoid the ‘lose-lose’ situation endured by the public currently.

The public would also look forward to a day when licensing and enforcement of public transport would be returned to the local/state levels. Devolving the controls for f public transport at the local level will allow the transport needs in each location to be fully utilised and met. It also aids accountability and transparency in the awarding of licenses and in enforcement. Contrary to suggestions by the industry, land transport should not be separated from sea transport because in many cities eg, Penang, the two need close integration and joint planning. The complexities and history of local transport development will be lost in ‘remote-control planning’ emanating from a centralised bureaucracy enforcing uniform rules that may not fit most locations.

It is widely suspected that the under-development of Penang’s ferries and sea-transport in general – as compared to Sarawak, for instance, is caused by federal government's desire to increase the profit for non-Penang owned Penang Bridge. Similarly, taxi drivers have been given a lot of leeway in enforcement, and get away with not using metres for fares because the taxi driver associations have strong political cables to pull at the federal level. The awarding of taxi licenses at the Penang airport to a certain companies is another prove of the cronyism that disadvantaging the passengers and crippling an important sector of public transport. Micro-management of the transport sector in Malaysia has created a nightmare that we have not woken up from till now.

In conclusion, there should be a public transport master plan for the country to be produced centrally. However, the control (licensing and enforcement) and local designing of public transports should be devolved to local and state levels so as to fully utilise local knowledge and to enhance accountability.

Experiences elsewhere in the world have proven this to be a better arrangement than over- centralising and micro-managing transport operations for an entire country.