60% of Selangor roads passed service life, potholes never-ending problem

According to the state Infrastructure and Public Amenities, Agriculture Modernisation and Agro-based Industry committee, some 60 percent of roads in Selangor has reached its service life and many are structurally damaged. This is the main reason why potholes and cracks are a never-ending problem.

Committee chairman Izham Hashim said that most of the roads in Selangor are close to 30 to 40 years old or more and past due for an upgrade. He further explained that roads usually reach maturity within 15 to 20 years, depending on the usage of the road.

“After this period, upgrading works have to be done, particularly to the subgrade and sub-base layers,” he said.

So, due to the issue of roads “expiring”, repair works like road patching are just temporary measures and would not help improve road conditions. It doesn’t help that companies also frequently overload their vehicles which will further shorten the lifespan of roads.

Unfortunately, Izham notes that there is no easy fix to this solution. Not only will it take an estimated 10 years to properly fix several thousands of kilometres of damaged roads, but there is also the issue that roads in Selangor are governed by different authorities.

In Selangor, there are 5 authorities responsible for roads. There is the Federal Public Works (JKR) in charge of federal roads, Selangor JKR who governs state roads, local councils are in charge of council roads, district roads who governs village roads, and the Drainage and Irrigation Department who looks after agricultural roads.

This is not including the highway roads as these falls in the jurisdiction of the Malaysian Highway Authority and project concessionaire.

With so many agencies involved, there is also the issue of lack of communication that will delay road maintenance.

Although the committee has proposed to restructure the ownership and maintenance of roads in Selangor to fall into only 2 agencies (local councils and state JKR) back in 2019, discussions are still underway.

Jurisdiction issue aside, Izham also highlighted that there is the issue of funding. Local councils and Selangor JKR are allocated a yearly budget to fix roads under Malaysian Road Record Information System (Marris) fund.

Federal roads, meanwhile, don’t have such funding. Remember how we’ve already established that the road tax we pay doesn’t go into funding road repairs or road works.

There is also the fact that funds have to be split into the building of new roads, hence the slow process of the upgrading works.

Nevertheless, the committee is eager to get upgrading road works underway noting that the work will have to be done in phases. The priority will be given to high-usage roads and based on the number of complaints.

But that’s not all that the authorities for upgrading the roads have to keep in mind, there is also the government’s plan to introduce Selangor Utility Corridor.

The plan will help prevent roads from being dug up repeatedly as utility lines such as electricity, water supply pipes and even Internet cables would be laid in a common underground trench by the side of the road.

Right now, these plans have already been implemented on newly built roads, but to carry out the same process on old roads would be another large hassle that upgrading authorities have to keep in mind.