Better public transport, more forest reserves among the plans for Selangor

SHAH ALAM: Public transport at your doorstep, not relying on your car to get around, and gazetting more forests is the vision for Selangor, says Elizabeth Wong.

In effort to address the issue of urban sprawl, the Selangor exco member said that the state government wants to encourage people to work and live in the city.

“We want to develop transport orientated developments. We want to have more people where there are public transportation roads, so that people can walk or take the train to work.

“That is the vision of the future we have for Selangor,” said Wong, who in charge of tourism, environment, green technology and consumer affairs for the state.

Urban sprawl is the uncontrolled growth of human populations away from urban areas into rural areas.

University Malaya department of urban and regional planning senior lecturer Dr Goh Hong Ching said that urban sprawl happens when there is insufficient provision of infrastructure, amenities and facilities, that can lead to traffic jams and pollution.

To overcome this, Goh said it is necessary to have good urban planning.

“Our flaw is that we do not go for a holistic approach, many plans are done on an ad hoc basis,” she said.

Goh said that public transportation must be addressed.

“Public transport right now is not convenient. Changing MRT lines is so difficult and it’s not convenient,” she said.

She added that the quality and connectivity for public transport has to be improved to convince more people to use it.

Wong agrees that public transportation is the “key to development in Selangor”.

She said that the state has involved with the construction of MRT and LRT lines, and is working closely with the Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD) to develop bus lanes, bike lanes, and provide free buses.

“We have a very comprehensive free bus service, it shows that public transportation is the way to go,” said Wong.

“There’re only so many roads we can build at the end of the day,” she added.

Goh noted that while Selangor is leading in connectivity in comparison to other states, “a lot more can still be done”.

She said that Malaysia must focus on creating a “compact city”, where people can work, live and shop in the same area.

“That will reduce the travelling,” she said.

“We are in the midst of the whole process. If we continue with careful planning, in 10 years’ time, it should be better,” said Goh.

She also highlighted that Malaysia’s natural resources, especially forests, must be conserved.

Wong said that Selangor is the only state in the whole of Malaysia to ban commercial logging and that no permits are given out for any logging concessions.

She added that the state also has stringent policies on degazetting forest reserves for development.

“We do not degazette forest reserves for housing anymore. The only thing that we allow for the cutting of forests or degazettement would be for what we call infrastructure projects.

“For example, water, pipes, gas pipes, electricity, roads, so on and so forth, it is anything that has a public benefit,” said Wong.

If a piece of land is degazetted, Wong said that the land area would have to be replaced for gazettement.

“It cannot just be replaced with any land, it must be good quality forest land that we can add on to existing forest reserves,” she said.

Wong said that the state hopes to discourage development at forest reserves by having strict conditions.

“So in any negotiation, we start from the premise of don’t go through our forests. Find some other land.

Selangor has advisors from Forest Research Institute Of Malaysia (FRIM) and the National University of Malaysia (UKM) to study to degazettement proposals to ensure the state’s forest reserves are not fragmented.

She said that Selangor has set a minimum 30% land area for forest reserves.

“To date, about 31.56% of land area is forest reserve, and it is increasing,” said Wong.

“We are actively looking for good pieces of state land, or land that has no status to add on to existing forests,” she said.

The Selangor Forestry Department has also been involved in conservation activities, and Wong said that the department had planted more than 900,000 trees over the past five years.

The state, she said, is also working with other agencies on the Central Forest Spine project that will conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services in three critical landscapes.