ART is a medium-capacity transit system, not just buses, says Premier’s pol sec

KUCHING (Jan 16): Pending assemblywoman Violet Yong’s recent remark likening the Autonomous Rapid Transit (ART) system to regular buses has fundamentally misrepresented the nature and purpose of the transportation system, said a political secretary to the Premier, Kua Jack Seng.

Kua, who is also Sarawak’s United Peoples’ Party (SUPP) Engkilili branch chairman, said regular buses serve a different role altogether.

“ART is a medium-capacity public transit system.

“Its purpose is not merely to add the number of vehicles, but to move passengers efficiently along major routes with reliable schedules and dedicated or semi-dedicated lanes.

“Regular buses are low-capacity vehicles, typically suitable for feeder or supplementary routes. Their functions, capacity and policy objectives are inherently different.

“Equating ART with buses is not a valid critique but a conceptual oversimplification,” he said in a statement.

He added that Yong’s argument focused solely on initial costs while overlooking the lifecycle costs and broader social consequences.

“Buses may appear cheaper at the outset, but as commuting demand grows, the government would need to continuously purchase more buses, hire additional drivers and increase subsidies,” said Kua.

More importantly, he said, congestion would persist, commuting times would lengthen and overall productivity would decline ― hidden costs that are often ignored.

“Describing buses as a ‘lower-cost’ solution is essentially short-term accounting,” he said.

Kua stressed that the core question of public transit policy is whether a system can function as the backbone of a city’s mobility.

“Medium-capacity systems exist precisely because buses alone cannot sustain rising urban density and long-term commuting demand―a reality demonstrated by cities worldwide,” he said.

Kua said rejecting ART’ role without proposing an equivalent and workable alternative would leave congestion remain unresolved as private vehicle numbers continue to increase.

He questioned how many drivers would be required, and how much government subsidies would be needed, to meaningfully reduce congestion during peak hours if ART were not implemented.

He also asked whether regular buses would have dedicated lanes and how they could effectively compete with private vehicles already crowding city roads.

“As traffic continues to grow and commute times lengthen, what mechanism is there to avoid repeating the cycle of adding buses, facing congestion, and adding even more buses?”, he said.

On Thursday, Yong said ART ‘is a bus-based public transport system that moves on wheels’, adding that its design and execution resemble rail-based systems.

She said the ART system would operate on dedicated corridors, elevated structures and segregated alignments ― features typically associated with light rail or mass rapid transit systems ― and noted that even tram systems in many do not rely solely on purpose-built infrastructure.