MANAGING a citymust be a big headache because a city never stands still.

It is always evolving, extensions and embellishment in parts, rubbish and rubble and dying in parts. It’s a hive-like buzzing of activity that gathers and generates chaotic numbers that often overwhelm the logical numbers of planners in their ivory towers. Almostmaking‘town-planning ‘ an oxymoronic word. (Almost because I have been in cities that work, where good planning has led not only to efficiency of services, but also humane spatial contexts, urban oases where individuals can breathe). Granting the impossibility of pleasing everyone, the Draft Kuala Lumpur City Plan 2020 doesn’t seem to have pleased anyone at all. After 25 years of mulling over it. Enough time for the visionary city planners to move from notching Lego blocks to clicking into Utopia- building mode with Sim City or similar megalomaniacal software. The problem with such mental exercises is they treat the Sims, the actual millions who have to be housed, moved around, moved out, dealt with, as pliable. Certainly, they are unprotesting in such exercises. Take the proposal for 11 newrail-linesandextensions, and 119 newstations. Sounds vital, but I bet there is laughable consideration given to carparks, a crucial complement to the professed task of siphoning off cars from the city centre. I take public transport when I have to go to the city, deeming it too stressful to deal with jams, where to park (don’t even think of how much you have to pay for the privilege), drivers whose mothers are unspeakable, and I am familiar with the Putra line between the Taman Jaya stop and KLCC. The Taman Jaya station’s space for cars is laughably limited to about 20 cars at most, the situation not made dire only because there is a big private carpark across the road that charges RM3 per entry. Is there any outlying station on any of the three lines that has parking to accommodate the number of cars the number-pushers idealistically project will be taken off the roads? In a recent two years, I had a purpose to take the train to KLCC once a week. There were two occasions at KLCC, after five in the evening, when the station couldn’t copewith the crowd, and had to stop the turnstiles, leading to a roiling, boiling chaotic confusion of commuters trying to line up to buy tickets mingling with a gathering immobility of thousands pressing against the dead turnstiles. On a third occasion, the shutters came down – the trains were not running. I had three options – one, since I am seldom without a book, find a café, a cup of coffee and read through the crush; two (not really an option after I tried it twice), accost taxi-drivers who think you are rich or dumb or both to pay RM40 to go to PJ; three, decide that I can cope with the herdmentality. When I first went to Tokyo more than two-and-a-half decades ago, I had read horror stories and seen photos and news-clips of people whose job was to cram passengers into trains during rush-hour. Fortunately for me,my transport was largely taken care of by Japanese of- ficialdom, and the one free moment I had to hunt down the one bookstore in Tokyo that had Japanese literature in English translation, one look at the masses in the tube-station, the daunting hieroglyphics on the signage that required deciphering, and I decided the speaker’s fee I had received from the United Nations would take care of the cab fare. For many evenings of two years or so, I dealt with a mob at KLCC that may have tried to maintain queues, except that in the middle there is not much space between stairs and tracks, allowing sneaks to go where no line is visible. When trains arrive, there is a pressing push-and-shove from both sides, a few commuters leak out, and miraculously, a larger number squeeze in, finding space where none seemed possible. There will be no breathing space for me till after Sentral. It leaves me time to marvel that I have never seen passengers squeezed into the centre of carriages miss their stops because the rank ranked “esh in front of them just could not yield a way through. It leaves me time to think that those who favour groping, musty armpits and sour breath must think that the ride is bliss on-line. More than 25 years later, I have my “Tokyo train” experience. Guess I am now living in a developed orderly country. So why am I glad I don’t have to ride the rails from KLCC after five any more? Public transport in former editor and leader writer Thor KahHoong’s childhood meant a trishaw ride from Central Market to Brick- fields.

Source: Malay Mail – June 24, 2008