From Wan Agyl Wan Hassan

Malaysia does not suffer from a lack of transport ambition.

Over the past decade, it has built some of the most extensive rail and highway infrastructure in Southeast Asia, expanded its urban rail footprint, modernised airports, and connected regions long considered peripheral.

In physical terms, Malaysia has delivered the hardware of a modern transport system.

Yet for millions of Malaysians, mobility remains expensive, inconvenient, and dependent on cars.

Daily commutes are still shaped by congestion, long travel times, unreliable first- and last-mile connectivity, and the quiet pressure to own a vehicle simply to participate in urban life.

This gap between investment and lived experience explains why transport has become one of the country’s most persistent quality-of-life challenges.

What is often missed in this discussion is that the choice many Malaysians face is not strictly between public transport and private cars. For lower-income households in particular, the real alternative is the motorcycle.

When buses are unreliable, stations are distant, and walking environments feel unsafe, motorcycles become the default last-mile solution; fast and affordable, but dangerously exposed.

Any transport strategy that ignores this reality risks entrenching inequality rather than reducing it, especially in a country where two-wheelers account for a disproportionate share of road fatalities.

This reality matters now because the United Nations has declared 2026 to 2035 as the Decade of Sustainable Transport — a global call not for more projects, but for better outcomes.

The UN framework reframes transport as a social system that must be safe, accessible, inclusive, resilient, and low-carbon rather than a narrow engineering exercise measured in kilometres built or money spent.

Malaysia enters this decade with mixed results. On one hand, it has largely delivered on infrastructure expansion. On the other, key outcome indicators, namely public transport modal share, emissions, and affordability have stagnated or moved in the wrong direction.

Despite new MRT and LRT lines and improved rail reliability like the recent Johor Bahru-Kuala Lumpur ETS3, the upcoming East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) and Johor-Singapore Rapid Transit System (RTS), the proportion of trips made by public transport remains well below national targets, while private vehicle ownership continues to rise.

The problem is not effort. It is emphasis.

For years, the transport policy has been dominated by supply-side logic: build more capacity and users will come.

But Malaysia’s own experience shows that infrastructure alone does not change behaviour. When fuel remains affordable, parking abundant, walking environments fragmented, and buses trapped in traffic, new rail lines are forced to compete against a system that quietly favours private vehicles and motorcycles every day.

The UN Decade of Sustainable Transport challenges countries to move beyond this imbalance.

Its priorities place equal weight on safety, access, governance, demand management, and people-centred urban design; recognising that sustainable transport emerges from how systems are managed, priced, integrated, and experienced, not merely constructed.

Encouragingly, Malaysia has begun to pivot. Fuel subsidy rationalisation, the expansion of bus services under gross-cost contracts, and renewed attention to first- and last-mile connectivity signal a shift toward the “software” of transport policy.

These are not glamorous reforms, but they directly influence daily decisions about how people travel.

Still, finishing the transport system requires confronting deeper structural mismatches particularly in land use planning.

When affordable housing is pushed to the urban fringe while developments near rail stations are priced for higher-income buyers, the system quietly locks lower-income households into long commutes and motorcycle dependence.

No amount of street-level design can fully compensate for urban sprawl and disconnected housing policy. Aligning transport with land use and housing decisions is therefore not optional; it is fundamental.

Safety, too, must be understood more broadly than engineering standards or crash statistics.

In the Malaysian context, safety includes whether bus stops are well-lit, whether walkways are continuous and shaded, and whether women, older persons, and students feel secure travelling independently, especially at night.

These everyday conditions often determine mode choice more decisively than fares or travel times, yet they remain chronically under-prioritised.

A truly sustainable transport system is not one where trains run through empty stations while roads remain congested.

It is one where households can reliably choose not to own a second vehicle, where young people can access jobs without financial strain, where older residents can move safely without driving, and where emissions fall because better options genuinely exist.

This is not a question of ambition. It is a question of completion.

Malaysia has built much of the hardware it needs. The test of the Decade of Sustainable Transport will be whether it finally finishes the system; by aligning pricing, planning, land use, safety, and governance with the realities of how Malaysians actually move.

Only then will transport investment translate into a more affordable, inclusive, and sustainable way of life.

Wan Agyl Wan Hassan is the founder and CEO of MY Mobility Vision, a transport think tank.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.