Delivering an Effective and Efficient Transport System

            Based on the article “Delivering an Effective and Efficient Transport System” in the Business Times, we found most of the city or town in this country has a need to get very effective and efficient transport system urban public transport as the population of people in this country are growing every day. Especially in big city like Kuala Lumpur. The numbers of people use the public transport to travel around is increasing. Countries like New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore, they have a very fast and dependable urban public transport system. As for now Malaysia are heading towards to the road of becoming one of the high-income nations in the world, the Malaysia government realised that they must have a fast, reliable and comfortable urban public transport system instead of having those slow, unreliable and not-on-time public transport. There are a few reasons of why is there a needed the system of effective and efficient transport system.

As the population are growing, the demands for car s are also increasing too. Adults will have to drive to their working place and the students will have to drive to their college. When the cars on the road are increasing, there will always a heavy traffic jam in the rush hours such as during 7:00a.m. to 9:00a.m. early in the morning when everyone is going out to work and 5:00p.m. to 9:00p.m.which is when everyone is going back home after their job of the day is end. At this point, there will be an opportunity cost because people will have to sacrifice their dinner time with family or resting time because they might be stuck in the traffic jam for at least 1 hour (depends on how heavy is the traffic jam and area). Even though there are trains and buses as our daily transport, but people are still facing the same problem.  People who taking public transport have to take longer time than those who driving to their destination. As we move down along the PPF, we can see that the longer the time of people jam in the congestion then the shorter the time of people spend time with their family. This is one of the reasons why people will rather purchase a car to drive to their destination instead of taking public transport. So this has caused the car has increased very rapidly every year.

Since many people are having a hard time on jamming in the heavy traffic jam, some of the citizens decided to take public transport to work. So this has caused the demand for the KTM, LRT and buses in Malaysia have increased. But due to the not-on-time basis of the public transport, it had caused the demand of the cabs increases too. This has caused the price of the cabs increased because there are many people are willing to pay more to reach their destination when they are going too late to work or when there’s an urgent matter during the delay of public transport. For example in Singapore, there was a serious case about MRT system was down for 4 hours in December 2011. At that time, people who were in an urgent matter or not willing to waste their time on waiting the system recover will take bus and cabs to reach their destination. Cab drivers has took that opportunity to increase the price of the cab due to it’s an income opportunity for them. Smart people will always take the opportunity when the time is right. Although the prices of cab has increased, but people are still willing to take cabs when there are no choice for them to choose. So the price of the cabs is perfectly inelastic demand, especially for the poor people, because people are still willing to take cab although the price has increased up to 25% ~ 35% of the original prices. From here, there is a perfectly inelastic demand which the demand curve is vertical especially for the poor citizens. For poor citizens, they do not have any choice, because there are no any substitutes for cabs, and therefore, they will have to pay for it if they want to take a cab. However, for those citizens with higher income, there is a perfectly elastic demand in which the curve is horizontally. Even though the prices of cab already increased, they have other options instead of taking a cab.

In order to able to make the big cities such as Kuala Lumpur and other places are become liveable for work, leisure, entertainment and learning, an efficient urban public transport is very important key to make it happen. Malaysia government had done a lot of upgrades to make the public transport become better. A few of the new systems was being introduced to the Malaysians. A free city bus service was introduced in Malaysia by our prime minister, which is the Go-KL City Bus. Since most of the people and traffic jam in KL, he increased the buses to improve the mobility of access to public transport. A few new features will be installed in the buses. The new buses system is free and easy ride too. Another one is the all the trains are also undergoing a big upgrade. Rails of the trains are now having extension and expansion. So, numbers of KTM Komuter and LRT has been increased. MRT were also introduced in Malaysia.

From all these services, we can see that in future, the demand for transport will be increase since they are so convenience for all users. We also can see that the supply for these transportation are also increasing due to the increasing of the public transportations. The public transportation drivers are now also on demand. From here we can see the demand curve will be shift to right side because the quantity demand has increase since there are so many advantages on taking public transport. We also can say as the cars will be substitute into the public transport which is mean when people find there are more advantages in the public transport, people will substitute from driving by own into take public transport.

As a conclusion, the supply of public transport will be increase due to the demand are also increasing when the advantages of taking public transport has been given.