“We would like a city for everyone and not just for vehicles,” mayor Mahadi Che Ngah told FMT.
“We hope to make the streets in the city centre more friendly and attractive to pedestrians, including the disabled, children, senior citizens, cyclists and public transport users.”
Mahadi said lowering the speed limits would put the people and their safety first.
“It will improve the walkability and liveability in the city. This will sustain pedestrian activities and improve the environment.
“City folk will feel more connected to the city which, in turn, will improve the local economy,” he said.
Mahadi said the framework for the safer roads plan, undertaken together with the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros), will be initiated soon.
Last week, Miros chairman Suret Singh and its director-general, Khairil Anwar Abu Kassim, paid a courtesy call on Mahadi.
They agreed to collaborate on identifying the stretches of roads where 30kph and 50kph speed limits could be implemented as a road safety measure.
In a tweet a day after the meeting, Suret announced that the institute would be working with DBKL to make this plan a reality.
Other than the study to reduce speed limits, the discussion centred on the possibility of data and record sharing between DBKL and Miros.
This will mainly involve CCTV recordings of traffic offences committed in the capital city.
Miros is in the final stages of finalising the proposal for a standard 30kph speed limit for urban and residential areas, cities and villages as part of the national road safety plan for 2022-2030.
Mahadi, a town planner by training, welcomed the opportunity to work with experts from Miros to ensure safer roads for the people.
DBKL’s decision to improve road safety is in line with the call made by World Health Organization director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for governments around the world to urgently adopt the 30kph speed limit for cities.
“We need a new vision to create safe, healthy, green and liveable cities,” Ghebreyesus had said.
Malaysia is one of the countries that ratified the Stockholm Declaration on road safety, with 18 resolutions, at a global ministerial conference in February 2020.
The 80 ministers at the conference made a pledge to halve the number of road deaths by 2030 and proposed the speed limit of 30kph as “the new norm” in areas where motorcyclists, car drivers, pedestrians and cyclists are the common road users.