Bukit Antarabangsa community leader Dr Rafick Khan Abdul Rahman said the local councils in Ampang Jaya and Selayang should be allowed to appoint independent consultants to carry out social, traffic and environment impact assessments.
He said various impact assessments in the past were not conducted in a transparent and fair manner.
“Consultants appointed by the builders normally provided favourable findings with doubtful data in their reports just to tailor approval for new highway projects,” he said.
Rafick said the traffic impact assessment for the East Klang Valley Expressway had been conducted during a festive season which would have skewed the results.
He said that authorities should apply the “four-eyed principle” during engagement with stakeholders.
“Please don’t treat the populace like the enemy. Be open and work together with the community,” he said, adding that highway proponents and the Malaysia Highway Authority (LLM) had been reluctant in providing pertinent feedback upon request.
“Highways in the Klang Valley have been poorly planned all along and it affects our quality of life. Local councils should be the balancing act by focusing on micro issues,” said Rafick, who is also a former army physician.
“Just don’t simply grant them (contractors) the leeway to mould and finalise the alignment, decide on the highway design and land use according to their preference.”
The Kuala Lumpur Northern Dispersal Expressway (or KL Node) is the final portion of the Kuala Lumpur Outer Ring Road project.
Rafick said KL Node must be directly connected to the EKVE and the Kuala Lumpur-Kuala Selangor highway (or Latar expressway) instead of allowing traffic to spill over to local roads upon exit points.
“If this is not addressed, it will be a repeat of the bottleneck, like the seven-lane situation in which the Duke Highway egress combines with roads and exits into mixed development, merging into the three-lane Middle Ring Road 2,” he said.
Transport planning expert Wan Agyl Wan Hassan said the proposed highway to connect east and north corridors of Klang Valley must be connected to public transport stations to give more mobility for the people.
Ample parking spots would also be required at the transit-oriented development.
Wan Agyl reaffirmed that tolled highways were not the essential solution to reduce congestion, “since we have been also struggling to improve our public transport”.
If the proposal for the 24-km KL Node was to go through, it should be the pioneer supporting transit on development inter-connectivity, he said.
A spokesman for the Coalition against Petaling Jaya Dispersal Link, Michael Kum, said KL Node must be designed with more “applied deep thought” and “not just superficial lines cutting across people’s housing areas and thus increasing carbon footprint”.