It is nothing new and as expected. The " business community" will start doing the necessary to get the stations located as close as possible to the existing commercial centre and township. Some even go for extra mile for lobbying to be closed to the future development areas.
Personally, I have no issue with this but if this "lobbying" cause the cost of MRT development projects to balloon from the estimates, " Hello ! what is happening here ? ". I for one, being the potential user of this MRT would want everything within walking distance- like in Paris, London, Vienna and Rome.
The government shall not lose sights and shall put the feet firmly on the ground, that the development shall benefits all walks of people and not " certain and special groups of people". So, the voice of this majority of the people shall come first. I have read the plan that the MRT development will emulate the one in Hong Kong, where the company responsible in managing the MRT system also involve in "ancillary business" that very much related to the MRT system such as property business. It is a well known the fact that MRT and similar business in any part of the world is hardly making money. As such the ancillary income will eventually finance the MRT system operating expenditure rather than depending on government coffer, which is common sense and logical things to do/ This shall also motivates the operator of the train system to be effective and efficient to increase ridership which translate to higher income.
Have we not learned from the lessons of the existing trains- Putra, ERL, Monorel and STAR LRT ? If we do not learn anything from it, then we are actually making a BIG blunder [ mistake is just too kind choice of words] at the expense of public fund.
In then end of the day, the project owner will not be able to satisfy all the people and groups of people. However, the most important thing is to satisfy majority of the people who will be utilizing the public transport and not groups of people who are driving around to the office driving Mercedez Benz, BMW, Audi and other luxury cars. Am I being jealous ? Not at all :)
I have read that project implementer i.e. SPAD will invite public views on the routes somewhere in March 2011. This is my proposal, rather than merely a showcase of the project, SPAD shall hold a " referendum" and seek agreement from people from Sg. Buloh to Kajang [ within the radius] as to where they want the location of the stations to be. The government to come out with possible and feasible routes and let the majority of the people vote through referendum -only the eligible voters can cast the ballot. How about that ?
Alternatively, ask the lobbying parties to partly finance the projects so that government will be able to save public funds to be utilized for other ETP programs. There is no such things as free lunch, more so in today's world. This shall be deemed as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility [ CSR] on part of the business community.
I am allergy to hear the word " increase in cost ", "exceed the budget", " balloon cost" and words with same family name.
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