High tech transport plan for PJ

PETALING JAYA: Come August, the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) is set to be the first local council in the country to use a world renowned transport software to chart PJ’s public transport needs for the next 10 years.
PJ mayor Mohd Azizi Mohd Zain said the council’s planning department has been developing a model since April using the Visum and Vissim software.
“We have started to create a model to simulate future traffic conditions and incident management system, traffic impact study. This can help us to chart PJ transportation planning,” said Mohd Azizi at the city council’s headquarters today.
Seen as a huge step forward in developing MBPJ’s Master Transportation Masterplan to achieve the 40% public transport ridership by 2030, the council’s Master Traffic and Urban Transportation Plan committee chairman Lee Suet Sen said the Vissim and Visum software would analyse the public transport needs for PJ in totality.
“The future planning of PJ would work on this. For example, any future development will go through this master software for traffic impact study or traffic condition and can help us chart our public transport plan for a particular area,“ said Suet Sen.
theSun understands that there would be five bus transit routes around the PJ areas including a bus route from Bandar Utama/Damansara Utama to nearby townships with the purpose of reducing the usage of private vehicles in the area.
Suet Sen said that the software would also assist the council on matters of land use.
“The software will help us to decide whether we should have a transportation hub or pedestrian oriented development with the MRT or LRT,” he added.
Meanwhile, on a separate issue, the mayor also announced that the council have decided to remove the final part of the Damansara-Shah Alam Expressway (DASH) alignment from the proposed Petaling Jaya Local Plan 2 (Amendment 1).
 “Following the decision by the state government on May 13, the council has agreed with the state government that the alignment of DASH which did not receive any objections from the public will be presented in a council’s public hearing session.
 “At the same time, we will be requesting the Malaysia Highway Authority (LLM) to conduct a review on the final alignment of the expressway involving Mutiara Damansara and Damansara Perdana to ensure some new proposed alignments can be proposed and subsequently DASH’s concessionaire, Projek Lintasan Kota Holdings Sdn Bhd (Prolintas) should conduct discussion and engagement session with the affected residents,” Mohd Azizi said.