Asia tries to overcome traffic problem

Every Asian nation deals with traffic problems in a different way. In Thailand, King Bhumipol has to stress the urgent need to tackle the crisis. In Hong Kong excessive delays are not tolerated. In Malaysia's capital planners are starting from scratch -- by building a new city. Jakarta Post Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports on these contrasts.

HONG KONG (JP): For many Thais, it must have been a disturbing jolt when they learnt that on September 3rd King Bhumipol Adulyadej had undergone his second heart operation in six months.

After nearly 50 years on the throne King Bhumipol is not merely more revered than ever -- he also appears more indispensable. The official communiques on his health were meant to sound reassuring. The fact that the Queen, the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess and many other members of the Royal Family were all in attendance "to look after and comfort the King" inevitably conveyed a worrying sense of unease.

As it had happened, in the previous week the King had once again vividly illustrated why he is both highly regarded and badly needed. In a departure from the usual Royal decorum, the King had spoken out about a problem left unsolved for too many years by Thai politicians, whether democratic or authoritarian: Bangkok's widely-pervasive, never-ending, slow-moving and GNP- destroying traffic jams. By one estimate the snarl-ups cause a direct loss of 4.13 percent to the Gross National Product, leave aside the psychological damage to Bangkok's citizenry.

As earlier reported by the Jakarta Post, the recent Thai general election resulted in the dubious compromise over the traffic problem, whereby one party in the ruling coalition took responsibility for the inner city while another party was given the mission of improving the outer suburbs. The King took issue with this questionable strategy noting how the "leaders keep talking, talking, talking and they keep opposing each other".

King Bhumipol intervenes in politics rarely and usually to avert a national crisis. His direct comments on this occasion reflected the conviction, expressed in his birthday address last December, that continued failure to solve the traffic problem could create in five or six years time "an unsolvable crisis, no matter how much money was spent on it".

When the Prime Minister and the two deputy premiers in charge of traffic solutions quickly sought a Royal audience to indicate that they really were trying this time, King Bhumipol reportedly gave them a map indicating one way in which the horrendous traffic jams could be eased.

The King disclosed that his awareness of the depth of the traffic problem arose primarily from information technology - radio, TV, aerial pictures, and direct human contact. All these means are of course available to Thai politicians. They must know italicize know the vexed problem. But, in one of Southeast Asia's most baffling puzzles, they have failed act on that knowledge.

It remains to be seen if the direct Royal prodding will finally produce some results.

Hong Kong: There have been many more traffic jams than usual in Hong Kong recently as the colony's weather, geography, and temperamental citizens have come together in some tragic but also interesting ways.

Technically Hong Kong, like Tokyo, awaits the Big One, but whereas the Japanese expect a massive earthquake, Hong Kong-ites anticipate a direct hit by a major typhoon.

This is the time of year when tropical depressions, tropical storms, and full-blown typhoons regularly roll off the Pacific Ocean and across the South China and East China Seas.

Nearly all of them hit one part of the Philippines or another. But for well over a decade a really major typhoon, packing winds well over a 100 miles per hour and quickly dumping a massive amount of rain has failed to cross the China coast at Hong Kong. They have tended instead to veer to the south towards Vietnam or north towards Taiwan and Japan.

This year the Big One has still not struck but a steady procession of tropical depressions and storms have done almost as much damage.

The damage becomes more comprehensible if a small comparison is born in mind. Hong Kong is double the land and populations size of its sister city-state Singapore -- but Singapore has double the amount of usable land. Singapore is basically flat, Hong Kong is built on hills.

So everywhere in Hong Kong roads and buildings are either on, or close to, often steep slopes. Amidst the massive rain of the last two months there have been an estimated ninety landslides, causing many casualties. In one particularly tragic case, an Indian air-hostess and her American partner were belatedly found locked in a death-embrace once the tons of mud which had engulfed their home were finally cleared away.

For years the government has been trying to prevent tragedies such as this by concreting slopes to make them slip-proof. But every time it rains heavily for a long period, it quickly becomes obvious that many more slopes have to be concreted or otherwise made safe.

One highway in the northwest New Territories had to be briefly closed after a large boulder rolled off a slope and killed a passing motorist. The same highway had to be totally closed when more rain exposed more dangerous slopes. This caused massive traffic dislocation, not least because the highway helps feed traffic to and from the world's busiest container port at Kwaichung.

Democratic Thais may passively accept their traffic jam fate but Hong Kong-ites do not. Hong Kong is not a democracy -- but the immediate upsurge of protest over the congestion, during which one top bureaucrat seen as responsible for the problem was physically mobbed, certainly stimulated the government's ability to deal quickly with the situation. The highway is due to be reopened in a few days time, with threatening slopes duly concreted, unless, of course, another tropical depression or typhoon creates the threat of more dangerous mud-slides.

Malaysia: Malaysia has come up with an original way of eliminating congestion in a capital city: move the administrative capital out of the capital city.

That was the clear message delivered by Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad as he recently inaugurated Putrajaya, roughly 30 km south of Kuala Lumpur. Putrajaya, named after Malaysia's first beloved Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, will be to Kuala Lumpur what New Delhi was to Delhi, or Canberra was to Sydney and Melbourne: a planned city for the primary purpose of housing the government.

Dr Mahathir expects to move into Putrajaya in three years time, and to have the whole ambitious two-phase complex completed by the year 2005.

Malaysia's ability to envisage and execute ambitious projects was recently illustrated when Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao visited KL.

A memorandum was then signed under which Malaysia will provide know-how for the construction of a 13,000 km national highway linking Kanya Kumari in the south and Kashmir in the north, Bombay in the west and Calcutta in the east. Malaysia recently completed its own north-south highway in West Malaysia and that is almost the least of its big project accomplishments.

In the center of KL, where the race course once stood, twin towers are being erected both of which will be taller than the world's current tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago. (An even taller building is said to be coming up in the western Chinese city of Chongqing but when that will be completed is not known).

A new Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at Sepang south-southeast of KL, far more grandiose than the current airport at Subang, is due to be completed in 1998. That's the year when Malaysia hosts the next Commonwealth Games, and a Sports Complex being created in between KL and Putrajaya at a cost of US$217 million will be completed by then too.

Meanwhile over in Sarawak the groundwork for one of the world's tallest hydroelectric dams, costing an estimated US$6 billion, has been completed and there are plans to make a new large port at the old city of Malacca.

There is little doubt that Malaysia can afford all these pricey schemes. The country has recorded seven successive years of GNP growth in excess of eight per cent - and this year the figure looks like being closer to ten percent.

As for traffic jams in Putrajaya, the use of cars there will be discouraged and people will move from one government office to another on a tramway. The political fact that the Prime Minister has no intention of retiring in the near future was also revealed at the Putrajaya inauguration. Dr Mahathir intends to move into the new Prime Ministerial office block when it is completed in 1998.