Light Rail Transit in Klang Valley: Health, Environmental and Economic Impact Analysis

Light rail transit in Klang Valley: Health, environmental and economic impact analysis.

2258081, 2259421, 2261911,2273201, 2281231, and 2291801.

1 School of International Studies, University Utara Malaysia, Malaysia

Abstract. Klang Valley is the centre of Kuala Lumpur and some of part in Selangor. This area has different cities and suburbs, influence the highly integration between them and the road network and rapid transit system is well developed. The development of this brings negative impact such as the congension and accident happens in the expressways especially at peak hours. The alternative to solve this problem by developed the transit systems like light rail transit (LRT) and the monorail. This paper analyzes the health, environmental and economic impact of light rail transit in Klang Valley. The analysis concentrate is health, economic, environment and social impact in negative and positive of LRT in this area

Keywords.  Light rail transit (LRT). Rapid transit. Health. Economic. Environment. Transportation. Klang Valley.

1. Introduction and Background

Public transportations nowadays have become one of the core components in the country in order to compete with other developing and developed countries in urbanization’s area. As for Malaysia, one of the greatest public transportation services could be seen in the Klang Valley as Klang Valley is currently growing area thus, it has all of the major transportation system. However, according to the Dahalan, D. et al. (2015), only a few percent of Malaysian people would choose public transport as their premier mode of transportation and the rest would rather use private or on their own. In such circumstances, Malaysia has actively promoting and providing efficient public transport infrastructure where only the users were doubting about the quality of public transport that is provided thus effecting the demand for public transport.

Light Rail Transit (LRT) has potentially increase the market for public transport travel in a country. LRT should always be known for complementing the other public transport and not as the competitors such as bus and taxis. It could be attributed to its futuristic transportation, urbanization and reliability other than being convenient and environmental friendly to the users. It is proven that many happy users that promoting LRT as the answer to avoid congestion on the streets. According to Ginn, S (1998), LRT is the mode of urbanization of transport that is predominantly reserved, but not needed to be gap by the grade. It is an electrically caused rail vehicles operate singly.

2.0 Impact of LRT in Klang Valley: Health

2.1 Positive Impact on Health

    2.1.1 Decrease the rate of obesity

 As the matter of fact, light rail transit (LRT) system could give a huge impact on people’s health. It could boost work out patterns and decrease the rate of obesity among Malaysians. There are more than 50% of Malaysian citizens who are passive and these would lead to cause harm to body especially in terms of obesity, diabetes and also heart disease. According to Stokes R.J.et al. (2008), these disease are mainly taper to the kids and racial minorities. Mode of transportation is one of the factor on the failure to withstand medium forms of any particular physical activity besides the factors of age, sex, and social economic class. For instance, walking or any other particular moderate activities are convenient to do by most people other than tend to sustain over time as it can also lead to a decreasing in weight in a short time.

2.1.2 Disable facilities

    As stated by MacDonald J.M., (2010), people who use Light Rail Transit would undergo a significant compounded over the time in trying to meet the suggested levels of weekly physical activity and decreases in Body Mass Index (BMI) opposed to the people who did not use LRT service. Besides, individuals that having hard time such as the disables also had a great impact on the existence of LRT. Since one of the motive of building LRT is to give accommodation to the publics, the disables’ facilities are included as well. For instance, they would have more choices on how, where and when to travel with people’s help. Some of the disable people could enter without any fees and some would need equipment, depending on the needs of the disable. A study has been done which indicated the disable people would have to depend mostly on the public transport such as LRT rather than the private transport as the risk of taking private transport is higher than public transport.

    According to Salehuddin M.S et al., (2015), the comparison of attainability between LRT and KTM’s station was estimated by 50% that is convenient by the disable while for LRT train stations, it is higher which is more than 70% and Masjid Jamek was seen to be the most convenient rail transit station and as the lowest convenient rail transit station is KTM’s Kuala Lumpur station and this can be concluded that LRT has giving the better impact in terms of giving better facilities to the disables. As the conclusions, public transit systems can give effect to the positive health by convincing much people to lead a healthy life such as walking or even cycling to the station. This is also to ensure the amount of money can be save by exercising and hence could avoid much disease such as obesity, heart diseases, cancer and much more in the population.

2.2 Negative Impact on Health

2.2.1 Noise Pollution

   Environmental noise pollution is known as a noteworthy issue for the decay of the standard of life in urban areas because of the huge amount of population. Noise pollution, particularly from Light Rail Transit (LRT) lines, influence every day exercises and can prompt to a scope of medical issue such as heart attack and poor undertaking execution. The general result uncovered that commotion from the LRT lines has fundamentally influenced its neighborhood and aggravated the classes of the nearby schools significantly. The late advancements of urban hoisted streets and worker organize in Klang Valley can brought on inconvenience and poor natural quality and wellbeing issue. The most obvious and well-understood impact of the noise pollution to the society that live near the railway is the hearing loss and insomnia because of the extand exposure to high noise levels. The noise pollution that effected the neighbourhood and nearby school or workplace give a discomfort feeling and can interrupt daily activities due to the lack of sleep because of the high level of noise make by the light train transit (Loukaitou-Sideris and Schaffer 2014). According to the World Health Organisation (1999) the extend exposure to high commotion levels can be alluded as as noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) because of the extreme exposed to the high decibel level which is 140 dB and above. Average person that usually took light rail transit at Klang Valley can get exposure over 8 hours each day which take 40 years to suffer hearing loss at 75 dB of noise that make by the light train transit.