Owners of private vehicles might have to pay a new “congestion charge” when they drive into the Kuala Lumpur city centre by 2017, KL City Hall (DBKL) announced today.
KL Mayor Mohd Amin Nordin Abdul Aziz said the DBKL plans to impose the congestion charge on private vehicles after public transportation systems in the inner city have been enchanced.
“Maybe after the completion of Mass Rapid Transit (MRT Line 1),” he told The Sun Daily‘s Shahrim Tamrin, after attending the opening of 7th World Class Sustainable Cities Conference here this afternoon.
Deputy Minister for the Federal Territories Dr Loga Bala Mohan added that the initiative takes a page from successful policies by world class cities such as Singapore, London, Stockholm, and Rome.
Imposing congestion charges, he said, would also encourage those who usually drive into the city to use public transportation instead.
“The government will also impose plans to make it difficult for private vehicles to enter the city. This includes higher development costs for developers or building owners to build car parks which will contribute to high parking charges,” Dr Loga said.
An unnamed DBKL source also told The Sun Daily that there are plans to introduce radio-frequency indentification (RFID) features in road tax stickers to enable electronic road pricing (ERP) systems, similar to what is being implemented in Singapore.
This could also lead to Malaysian roads without toll plazas, as tolls would be collected via cashless RFID systems.
