| City Area Transit System | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 19 2010, 12:50 AM (781 Views) | |
| thrasher115 | Nov 19 2010, 12:50 AM Post #1 |
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Under the City Area Transit (CAT) System, geographic positioning systems (GPS) will be used for easy location of buses along different routes in the city. Free SMS services will be sought from telcos to let commuters know where and when the buses are coming. IMAGINE you are somewhere in the Kuching city and are able to locate the position of the bus coming your way by using a short message system (SMS) or handphone website. ![]() gravatar City Area Transit (CAT) System SMS to catch a bus By Ting Tieng Hee Under the City Area Transit (CAT) System, geographic positioning systems (GPS) will be used for easy location of buses along different routes in the city. Free SMS services will be sought from telcos to let commuters know where and when the buses are coming. IMAGINE you are somewhere in the Kuching city and are able to locate the position of the bus coming your way by using a short message system (SMS) or handphone website. This is no mere imagination as a revolutionised bus transport system is set to crystalise a year or two thence, especially with the completion of the Kuching Sentral bus terminal, currently under construction at Mile 6 1/2, Jalan Penrissen. “When you know the schedule, you can opt to take the bus at the time you wish and the service is such that there is a bus coming along every 15 minutes,� said William Chan, administrative director of a consortium of the existing bus companies in Kuching. The Sarawak Transport Company (STC) Bhd is one of them and Chan is its managing director. According to him, the system will change public perception of commuting by bus as it will not only be more convenient but also faster, more efficient and effective. Under the City Area Transit (CAT) System, geographic positioning systems (GPS), will be installed in new modern buses to enable their easy location along different routes in the city. “We will work with telecommunication companies to provide free SMS services to the public. You just send us an SMS and we tell you where and when the bus is coming,� Chan assured. The public could also use the website in their handphones to locate the buses and schedule their trips, he said. Chan felt that for the component of bus companies to be incorporated into Kuching Sentral, the City Area Transit (CAT) System must be implemented. But for this to be successfully carried out, a fleet of 100 state-of-art buses is needed, each costing around RM350,000. “We have forwarded the proposed system to the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) and asked the federal government to help us with a RM35 million funding as it is very hard to get loans from private banks. “The government has already earmarked RM3.5 billion for public transport low cost loans under the Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) to be given to us (public transport industry),� he said. Chan added that under the system, the new buses would ply the routes linking five other terminals to Kuching Sentral as the central hub. They are Bandar Samariang Terminal, Kubah Ria Terminal, Merdeka Plaza Terminal, Travillion Terminal and the Stutong Market Terminal. He said the system, more commonly known as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), had proven workable and useful in developing countries like Brazil, Indonesia (Jakarta) and China (Beijing), and would be applicable to Kuching as well. The CAT proposal has been forwarded to the federal Economic Planning Unit chaired by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his deputy Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak. “This is a brand new system to be incorporated pending government funding. Academicians have also given it very good review, saying it is feasible, viable and should have been done a long time ago,� Chan added. He said UITM professors had discussed the project with the consortium and after looking at the proposal, thought it was high time somebody looked at something like it. According to Chan, the whole CAT concept is similar to that of a Light Rail Transit (LRT) whereby people can use buses to wherever they want to go in Kuching city. “It’s important to have a way to link all the lines to Kuching Sental since it plays a bigger role than the rest of the hubs in that it has the express bus component in it.� All the express buses will only stop at Kuching Sentral where the passengers will be transferred to buses plying the five lines. “We believe to implement a system of this scale, we need loans for the buses and funding from the government. All the terminals have been discussed and put in place,� Chan said. All buses will have state-of-the art designs, using electronic passes via the Contactless SmartCard System, an automatic fare collection and fare verification technology. This system helps reduce long delays that generally accompany on-board payment, particularly if the driver is also responsible for fare collection and verification. It also removes the handling of cash by drivers which reduces incidents of dishonesty onboard. It is an open and transparent fare collection system with less opportunity to lead to circumstances to withhold funds by individuals. Chan said bus passes would be on a per-entry or daily basis, allowing passengers to travel on unlimited trips for the whole day, adding that passes on credit would also be available. Under the revolutionised system, commuters need no longer have to remember the bus numbers but just identify the buses by five colours — violet, blue, green, yellow and red. “Yellow buses follow yellow line, blue buses follow blue line and in downtown areas where buses run along the street line, we change it to a street car concept — something like in San Francisco where you can ask the bus to stop anywhere you want … only that here, we stop at the areas where passengers really want to go,� he explained. The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system has proven workable and useful in Brazil, the US and even Jakarta and Beijing. Brazil has proven it can transfer 45,000 people per hour per direction. Chan said for the bus consortium to break even, it only needed to capture one per cent of the more than 500,000 population in Kuching. “We don’t need that many in Kuching but the system has the potential to easily move about 50,000 people per day. Here, it is only used to move a maximum of 6,000 people per hour per direction and in a day, we move about 30,000 people. “We have a strategic alliance between buses, taxis and kereta sewa operators whereby the buses need not go to feeder roads and housing estates. You just have to make a call or SMS, they (kereta sewa) will go to your house and bring you to the terminals. From there, you take a bus to where you want to go.� Chan revealed the consortium would initially operate from 6am to 10pm daily and if successful, would adopt a 24-hour service. He is confident the system will give people another transport option … because it will be cheaper and more convenient than buying a car and servicing the monthly installments apart from rising fuel and maintenance costs and parking problems. Chan said after some calculations, it was found 70 per cent of the stopping points along a line needed zero transfer while about five per cent needed up to two transfers. “You can park your car somewhere like Boulevard Shopping Mall and Third Exchange where there are abundant spaces, then take a bus to Kuching and back. This is better than being stuck in traffic jams.� Chan said by taking buses, the public could help prevent traffic congestions in and around the city. Citing an example, he said a motorist travelling from Kota Sentosa to Kuching city had to pass at least five traffic lights and if it took 15 minutes to get through one, more than an hour would be lost waiting at traffic lights. He is all for the CAT system, saying the existing bus system is no longer current. He said the old system was pioneered during the colonial days when Kuching was the only workplace and everyone was staying outside the city. “Fifty years on, the model still is being used and people are still being sent to the city to work while development outside the city goes on unnoticed.� Chan said the consortium fervently hoped the government could implement the CAT system as soon as possible because they expected the global economic slowdown to spread to Malaysia in the coming months. from Borneo Post .http://www.theborneopost.com/?p=46355 |
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