Recently I stumbled upon Adam Something Youtube channel and it instantly became one of my favorites. His videos resonate with me because I am also huge believer in the idea of good public transport is crucial in good urban design. One of his most popular videos is about the downside of monorail. As soon as he opens his video with line "Monorails are a sleek, cool, and futuristic mode of transportation..", it instantly reminds me of our monorails in Malaysia - the very short line of KL Monorail as well as the Melaka Monorail that had failed horribly. After listening to his reasoning about the many problems of monorails, I start to think that the KL Monorail was a direct result of our failed Wawasan 2020 which rolled out by Mahathir in the 90s.
For anyone who doesn't know, Wawasan 2020 is the vision for Malaysia to become a fully industrialized nation by the year 2020. Well, as of now in year 2023, Malaysia is still only classified or seen as a developing nation stuck in middle-income trap, so we could confidently says that the vision has failed. Because Wawasan 2020 envisions a super futuristic version of Malaysia, what looks the most futuristic of all the modes of transportation? So it had to be monorail.
May be in the 90s, the disadvantages of monorail may not be so well known yet. But in year 2023, we have a lot to proves that monorail is not so practical after all. After the laughable and wasteful monorail experiment in Melaka, I hope that Penang don't make the same mistake when making future plans for public transport system.
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