By YIP YOKE TENG
Photos by RICKY LAI and BRIAN MOH | Mar 10, 2010
Worst yet to come for Kota Damansara folk
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Busy area: Densely-populated commercial and residential projects line Persiaran Surian, Kota Damansara, causing the two-lane road to be congested.
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teng@thestar.com.my |
IF you think the traffic in Kota Damansara is bad, brace yourself for a worsening situation as another 48 projects are coming up in the busy and hyped-up district.
The main road, Persiaran Surian, that is already chock-a-block with vehicles during peak hours, is to accommodate the projects all located within a 15km radius.
Some of the projects are being constructed while the others will take off in the near future. These projects were all approved under the previous administration while other developers are eyeing the lands in the lucrative location.
The 10-year-old Persiaran Surian, which is a two-lane road, is already servicing busy commercial buildings including Sunway Giza, Carrefour, Giant and Dataran Sunway, schools as well as a cluster of high-rise residential buildings.
The road connecting to the Damansara-Puchong Highway (LDP) is also used as an alternative route for motorists coming from and going to Shah Alam, Sungai Buloh as well as the nearby housing estates including Mutiara Damansara, Bandar Utama and Tropicana.
Persiaran Surian is also punctuated by bottlenecks, traffic light junctions as well as the tunnel that is always flooded during downpour.
“This district is only 10 years old and it is already going haywire. What we can do now is only damage control as developers of the approved projects are all going to the council with amended plans in an effort to maximise profits,” said Kota Damansara assemblyman Dr Nasir Hashim.
“The two-lane Persiaran Surian does not commensurate with the growth of the area and worse still, many plots of the land belonging to PKNS have been sold and so many projects have been approved,” he added.
Subang MP R. Sivarasa’s aide Peter Chong said the committee formed to rectify the Jalan Tanjung issue had called for the need of a traffic study to look into the situation in this area, which would include Kota Damansara.
He said the traffic study earlier commissioned by the Petaling Jaya City Council, triggered by an urgent need to rectify traffic problems arising from the three tunnels in Lembah Subang and Kelana Jaya, needed to be complemented by another traffic study because the former took into account that Jalan Tanjung was a public road.
“The cost of this study should be borne by the relevant developers and we may appoint Universiti Malaya to conduct the study,” he said.
He highlighted that the council should be able to collect close to RM30mil in development charges from these 48 new projects and if that could be done, the fund could be used to upgrade the area.
He said it had been suggested that development charges should also be backdated and imposed on previous projects, adding that the calculations were being worked out.
MBPJ councillor Panneerselvam Varathan said the council was on its toes to scrutinise the building plans submitted by the developers whose projects had been approved.
“Some of them backed their plans with traffic survey conducted in 2007, which was completely outdated.
“Others try to convince the council and residents that their project would be of low density, by saying that they are building only studio apartment, without looking into the complications,” he said.
He added that the council had to be on its guard against cheeky explanations from the developers, among them: “It’s already so congested now and it would not bring too much of a difference if we are adding just another 1%.”
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