Issues regarding vehicles

Vehicles are essential to every human being. Almost everyone, including every family has their
own vehicle. To make this hectic life easier, it is better to have a more reliable and easy mode
of transportation. By owning a car, we can stop relying on. Whatever the reason may be,
vehicles will always be an integral part of the human lives.

1. Cars break down on the road because it has not been properly maintained

It is important to carry out regular maintenance on our vehicles. Without proper

maintenance, our vehicles are more likely to be more to more serious problems in the
future and could also possibly break down in the middle of the journey and cause
congestions.

2. Heavy load vehicles operating during peak hours

In 2010, Plus Expressways Bhd have banned heavy good vehicles (HGV) from the
highways during the peak hours of the early morning. This is from 6.30am to 9.30am
on weekdays. Heavy vehicles weighing 10,000 kg and above must stay off the New
Klang Valley Expressway (NKVE) between Shah Alam and Jalan Duta, the Federal
Highway Route between Subang and Sungai Rasau and the North-South Expressway
(NSE) between Sungai Buloh and Bukit Lanjan. This was a very good initiative because
this helps with reducing congestion during peak hours. Drivers of heavy vehicles were
advised to use alternative routes (Figure 1). However, lately heavy vehicles still operate
on these highways during peak hours.
3. Cars older than 10 years still being used on the road
In Japan, three years after purchase, every new car has to go through an extensive
inspection process, and once every two years after that. Furthermore, vehicles older
than 10 years have to pass the inspection every year. As a result, most car owners in
Japan write off their cars after 10 years and buy new ones. Hundreds of thousands of
perfectly fine automobiles are demolished every year.
In Singapore, the National Environment Agency (NEA) is offering an incentive of up
to 3500$ for owners of motorcycles that are owners of older motorcycles to deregister
their vehicles over the next five years.
These are done not only to prevent pollution but are also to prevent congestion.

4. Too many cars on the road

Based on a few studies conducted in different countries, it is found that most traffic
congestions are caused by the fact that there are too many cars on the road. There are a
few countries that acknowledges this fact and tries to find ways to fix it. Countries like
Singapore won’t allow any increase in the number of cars on their roads to try and
reduce the amount of congestion.
 SOLUTIONS

• Send cars off for services and check ups every now and then. By performing routine
maintenance on vehicles, it will highly reduce the risk of serious problems occurring in
the future as well as improving the driving quality of your vehicle.

• The law that HGV are banned from certain highways in the mornings should be
enforced more strictly and impose fines for those who go against the law as it could
cause major congestions during peak hours.

• Malaysia should also implement laws regarding the amount of times a car can be used.
To make sure that this works, the government could offer incentives for owners of all
types of vehicles to deregister their vehicles for the next five to ten years.

• Malaysia can limit production of cars every year to encourage the public to use public
transport and also limit the amount of importations of cars into the country. We could
also take an example from Singapore. It is a country that is already a very expensive
place to own a car. This is caused by the fact that taxes for cars are very high and to
own a car, drivers need to buy a special certificate from the government which can cost
as much as 50,000 Singapore dollars (which is about RM153391.00) before they can
start driving on the road.
Issues on the road

1. Road capacity
In Malaysia, the capacity of road is design based on the Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR).
However, there is always an issue regarding congestion occur especially during
festive season such as Hari Raya, Deepavali and Chinese New Year.

Solution:
Adequacy of serviceability of road according to the design standard. JKR should do
road survey every year in order to monitor the traffic volume. If insufficient, they
should upgrade the road by adding extra lanes and widened the road. More lanes
create more capacity which means cars should be able to pass through faster.
Constructing alternative road, bypass, flyover or tunnel would also help to minimize
the congestion.
2. Road obstacle
Road obstacles such as pothole, ponding areas, road accident, road work, lane closure,
and hazardous mishaps cause a blockage or a merger which lead to traffic delay as
cars start to slow down.

Solution:
Try to minimize the disruption from the utility work. When accident occur, minimize
response time which means, all the authorities involved should come as soon as
possible so that it will not cause delay to the other car. Therefore, there should always
be an emergency response time planning with the local authorities such as police,
ambulance teams, and fire and rescue department. Besides, it is important to have a
diversion plan in place in the event of highway incident. For instance, signages,
cones, New Jersey Barrier and blinkers for road diversion during road work or road
closure. Next, routine maintenance can be defined as the requirement relates to minor
repair to the carriageways. Routine maintenance is needed to remove and resolve
obstacle or road condition which is a danger to the users.
3. Road maintenance
Poorly maintained road tends to cause traffic delay and accident mostly because the
driver attempts to avoid certain situation such as potholes and ponding area.

Solution:
Road maintenance should cover routine, heavy repair and upgrading works following
road safety procedure. Routine maintenance function is to immediately remove any
hazardous objects that can cause accidents such as car parts ad garbage. Heavy repair
such as pavement monitoring and repair, slope repair, and drainage repair should be
done more frequently. Upgrading works of road serviceability such as road width,
lanes, drainage and slope protection also need to be done once a year.
4. Waiting time at traffic light
Poor timing of traffic light in certain area will only congestion. Based on JKR
standard, the green period should be 70 seconds depends on the location. However,
the traffic volume from each intersection is different hence, for intersection with
heavy traffic volume, the number of vehicles tend to back up.

Solution:
To reduce inadequate green light duration, they can install intelligence traffic light.
Characteristics of the intelligence traffic light are the green period depends on the
vehicle cue length, minimum time for one car is 7 second, and use sensor to determine
the cue length.
Issues on the authorities

1. One of the issues that relate to the authorities is the lack of monitoring especially on
constructions during peak hours. In a certain area, some contractor does not follow the
standard operation procedure (SOP) which is to avoid construction work or unloading
construction materials during peaks hours. This issue becoming a trend nowadays due
to rarely patrol by the authorities

Figure 1: Construction work during peak hour

Solution: Improve the quality of work among authorities. Increase the number of
patrols near the construction and the authorities should check whether the contractors
followed the SOP. Failure from following the SOP should be fined and the contractors
should be given a warning letter to remind them about the SOP which is to avoid
constructions during peaks hours.

Figure 2: The authorities checking the construction area

2. Other than that, flash flood happens especially in urban area due to inefficient
drainage systems. This issue can cause traffic jams and can delay the time for the road
consumer.

Figure 3: Flash flood in urban area.

Solution:
The authorities should check whether the size of the drainage system is adequate to
cater to water during the rainy season and also the population increase in that area
should be taken into consideration. If necessary, a bigger size of diameter should be
used in the drainage system to make sure it can reduce the impact of the flash flood in
that area. This can prevent flash flood event and can reduce time delay for the road
user.

Figure 4: Construction of storm water drainage.

3. In some areas, roadblock not implemented smartly especially during peak hours or
holiday season. Serious delay in traffic happens especially there are roadblock on the
road and it increases the volume of vehicle on that road.

Solution:
The authorities should implement the roadblock during the night and should avoid
peak hours. This can reduce the volume of cars on the road that passes by the
roadblock as compared to a roadblock that would be made at daytime.

Figure 5: Roadblock by the authority.