The Penang Chinese Girls’ School and Phor Tay Institution, and the two schools’ alumni, plus the St Nicholas Home for the Blind and Visually Impaired want the elevated road shifted elsewhere.
The group is concerned over safety, pollution and stress factors from the construction of the six-lane flyover in the proposed Pan Island Link 1 (PIL 1) project, which would hover over the Gottlieb and Bagan Jermal roads across their buildings.
Representatives of the group submitted a memorandum protesting the plan to the Penang chief minister’s office today. They brought along 2,000 signed petitions of those concerned, demanding the alignment of the elevated highway be changed.
The group’s spokesperson, Daniel Soon, said the main concern of the schools was the mammoth flyover.
He said many students used the roads that would be affected as pedestrians to get to their schools and the construction would pose a risk to them and others, too.
He claimed a portion of the highway would cut into the school fields, which would effectively rob the schoolchildren of physical activity sessions.
Soon said at least 6,500 students and teachers would be mentally and physically affected by the construction of the flyover.
He said they had raised matters concerning sound and air pollution as early as 2016 but their call to change the alignment was not heeded.
“We are here again after two years to present our objection and I hope they take our concerns seriously,” Soon, who is executive director of the St Nicholas Home for the Blind and Visually Impaired said in Komtar today.
The memorandum was received by the chief of the Penang Transport Master Plan (PTMP) special purpose vehicle Lim Hock Seng.
Lim allayed concerns by the group, saying the highway project was still in its planning stage as the Detailed Environment Impact Assessment had yet to be approved.
He said the detailed design of the highway was being discussed presently and the group’s concerns would be seriously taken into account.
The flyover in question will also cut across a green space popular among Penangites as a jogging and recreational park.
The flyover will rise from Gurney Drive, cut across Jalan Bagan Jermal, and Gottlieb Road and elevate higher in front of the Muniswarar shrine before cutting across the Youth Park.
The PIL 1 is a 20km highway project under the RM47 billion PTMP, a state project to build highways, light rail transit lines and other modes of transport, expected to be financed through the reclamation of three islands.
The highway will be a toll-free road connecting Gurney Drive to the second Penang Bridge in Bayan Lepas.
It will have a 10km section with four tunnels, which have been proposed to be “drilled and blasted” through the hill slopes of Penang Hill, Paya Terubong and Sungai Ara.