You know you’re a KL driver if you want to punch potholes in the face. They’re everywhere, even downtown, because the MRT is being built, TRX is a gaping hole in the ground, and lorries are everywhere, turning our roads into swiss cheese.
Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) wants to end all that, and says it is confident KLites won’t have to worry about pothole-plagued streets by next year.
City Hall’s Civil Engineering and Urban Transportation Department is working on several projects to smoothen out the capital’s roads, DBKL deputy senior director Sabudin Mohd Salleh told Bernama‘s Syed Iylia Hariz.
Why the sudden race to pothole extermination?
“A study by the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research also finds that mishaps are not only due to the human factor but also due to the condition of roads and vehicles,” Sabudin said.
Well, yeah. How is that new information?
Anyway, in order to realise its lofty goal by the end of next year, DBKL will be monitoring all existing development projects in the city to ensure that all safety and property protection measures are in place.
“The developers must be responsible, they must repair damaged roads close to project sites because it is the heavily-laden lorries which make the roads susceptible to potholes.”
This year will also see a more centralised status quo: utility companies digging up roads to maintain or install new cable lines or water pipes will no longer be required to patch up those roads by themselves. DBKL will delegate a contractor to get the jobs done – but utility companies will have to bear the cost.
Sabudin added that City Hall has appointed 24 contractors to tackle the expected workload.
Kuala Lumpur, sans potholes sounds like a pipe dream to us, but if DBKL can make it happen b y the end of next year, we’ll toast a teh ais to that.
