Friday, April 29, 2011

malaysiakini's Latest Article on Highway Robbery...An Overview

(please click on diagram to enlarge)
The spreadsheet is based on figure given in the malaysiakini article and if you compare some of the highway deals, there appears to be some discrepancies that can be investigated further.
If you look at the right most column, you will find that the construction costs vary quite a bit from the very expensive Penang Bridge (~RM70mil/km) to the reasonable (RM7.7mil/km) for the NSH. The NSH is an exception as the project was done over a long period like about 10 years but if you consider the other 2 highlighted projects - Grand Saga and LDP, the costs are relatively high-more than 3 times higher than the Karak Highway that was built during the same period.
Since the toll agreements are now available to the public at the PWD, I suggest someone from malaysiakini ashould get the full details of the highways; especially those that have received significant compensation from the government.
I find it absurd that for some toll companies,after receiving almost 60% back of the construction costs they still have 22 years to collect tolls.
The other major assistance to the toll companies is that the government extended the concession period for major improvements to Penang Bridge and also the NSH. Making improvements should have been part and parcel of the company's duties and the government should have included a KPI like average speed of tolled road 60kph.
If you look at the details of the Penang Bridge, the tolls should have stopped in 2009(according to Wikipedia) but because of the extra lane built later, they are still collecting tolls.
Don't you think this is highway robbery?

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