Introduction: Walking – the forgotten mode of transportation

Kuala Lumpur aims to improve its public transport modal share to 70% by 2040, a lofty target from the current 25%. One of the key challenges within this aim is solving the first-and-last mile connectivity. Various mobility options have been put to test: such as feeder buses and on-demand pick-up service by RapidKL; e-scooters (such as Beam and OoGya), and electric bicycles by the private sector. These current efforts are however keeping silent on one modest yet very viable option – walking. Walking may well be the missing link in solving the issue of first-and-last mile connectivity for our city, aside from the many innate benefits it offers to make Kuala Lumpur more liveable.

We know why walking is important as a transport mode. It emits zero carbon, is a healthy habit, and removes cars from roads. The conversation on walkability however goes beyond the activity. It concerns the design of our city. Currently, our city is designed for cars. But this is a recent phenomenon arising from induced demand for car-centric infrastructure and national automotive policy. As recent as 1990s, public transport modal share was 37%, before dropping to 25% currently. We can return to our recent history of a walkable and public transport-centric city by understanding how urgent we need it for our cities to be more resilient and adaptable towards our immediate challenges.

What is urban resilience? UN Habitat defines it as ‘the ability of any urban system, with its inhabitants, to maintain continuity through all shocks and stresses, while positively adapting and transforming towards sustainability’. In Kuala Lumpur’s context, we have experienced shocks to our mobility systems, namely from COVID-19 pandemic and at a smaller scale, Kelana Jaya LRT 5-day closure in November 2022. In the medium term, we anticipate further stresses to our transport systems arising from the impending climate emergency through increases in the probability of environmental disasters. How a city withstands or adapts to such events depends on the strength of its urban fabric, which include economic, environment, and social aspects.

Walkability is not just nice-to-have but is important and urgent for our city. In this article, we shall consider how walkability is an important component in our efforts toward strengthening the urban fabric, to both mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis as well as to improve social cohesion.

The state of walkability in Kuala Lumpur

Walking in Kuala Lumpur is not easy. Having an equatorial climate, the weather is hot with an average daily mean of 28°C, relatively humid, with annual rainfall of about 223 cm (double the global average annual precipitation). It is also a sprawling city; one needs to cover substantial distance when travelling. The construction of highways and wide roads have reduced walkability by slicing and dicing our city into ‘superblocks’ only navigable by motor vehicles. These superblocks erect physical barriers that make it difficult or inconvenient for people to walk to local shops and businesses, let alone discover new shops. These mega roads also create noise and air pollution, which make the immediate surrounding areas less attractive to businesses and their customers.

Visiting the newer shopping malls or commercial areas in Kuala Lumpur, you may notice a common design pattern – one that tries to imitate the natural pedestrian walks using winding walkways, open spaces, and landscaping elements that help create a more organic and natural feel to the space. This approach acknowledges that walkability has great benefits towards local businesses as it increases visibility for small businesses and eateries, allowing people to browse and discover unfamiliar shops through visual prompts, essentially creating the ‘footfall traffic’ that businesses and investors track as indicators for the likelihood of making sales. Ironically, just a short walk to the edge or ‘frontier’ of these made-up walkways and you will realise that these idyllic walking tracks are mere ‘islands’ encircled by wide non-walkable roads with minimal pedestrian access and connectivity to the larger spaces beyond.

There have been efforts by Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) to improve pedestrian pathways in the city and impose a speed limit of 30 km per hour (a global standard) in urban and residential areas. In addition, elevated pedestrian pathways have been built alongside new real estate developments such as the one seen in Figure 2. These investments however leave much to desire, as the principle behind them still prioritise private cars instead of expanding road use to accommodate multi-modality. This led to half-hearted spending on pathways that are blocked by trees and signages or ones that end abruptly, zebra crossings that do not accommodate disabilities, and mazes of elevated paths. This illustration by Karl Jilg captures the situation well – roads are deep chasms that pose danger to pedestrians.

In February 2020, KL City Hall hinted on plans to pedestrianise 10 roads in the city by 2025, pioneered by 5 roads to be pedestrianised by the end of 2020, including Jalan Raja and Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman (TAR). However, the plan stalled and reports on it quietened down with the COVID-19 pandemic. While other cities, such as Paris, took advantage of the quiet downtime during the pandemic to permanently pedestrianise the city such as by adding cycle lanes, Kuala Lumpur failed to utilise the pandemic window to change road users habits. Instead, bus lanes were cut and pedestrianisation efforts remained to be seen.