DBKL mulling over disallowing parking bays in buildings

KUALA LUMPUR: Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) is looking at ways to disallow parking bays in buildings in an effort to reduce road traffic and encourage city folks to use public transportation.
Federal Territories Minister Datuk Seri Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said the policy of not having parking bays in a building has become a trend of a developed city, and Kuala Lumpur should follow suit.
"Look at what's happening in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Melbourne, London, the building style or redevelopment has changed and these building are not even allowed to build a carpark.
"They are trying to deter the people from using cars in the city and this are among the things that we are looking at so that we can be on par with the greatest cities in the world," Tengku Adnan said when launching the 2017 Kuala Lumpur City Community Development Strata Seminar held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre here.
Tengku Adnan added rapid urbanisation in Kuala Lumpur has changed the intensity and the pattern of land use in the city.
Thus, Kuala Lumpur residents and project developers must adapt to a vertical style building development to save space.
"This trend has become a norm that KLites need to adapt to.
"They need to accept this fact and change their old mentality to a modern metropolis lifestyle," he said.
He added city dwellers need to embrace these changes as Kuala Lumpur is only a small city with an area of approximately 243km².
Acknowledging that Kuala Lumpur needs to have a good public infrastructure before embarking on a modern metropolis lifestyle, Tengku Adnan said Putrajaya is doing its level best to provide the people with the best facilities.
"I would like to say sorry because at the moment there's a lot of congestion, a lot of potholes all over the city and there's a lot of things that needs to be upgraded.
"But we cannot address this issue right now because there's MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) construction, new highways under construction and also new roads and there's a lot of development in certain places.
"So this has caused city dwellers to feel inconvenient, but please bear with us and once all these projects is completed, we will not face such problems anymore," he said.
Meanwhile, the 2017 Kuala Lumpur City Community Development Strata Seminar aims to enhance stakeholder's knowledge in the development, construction as well as maintenance of a strata community in Kuala Lumpur.