Govt's "Road To Rail" Project Aims To Lower Lorry-Related Crashes

Transport Minister Anthony Loke has unveiled a "Road to Rail" initiative, prioritizing railway transport over trucks for container goods.

The East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project is central to this transformation. With the ECRL's projected completion in approximately two years, rail will become the primary means of transporting goods and containers to the east coast, according to Loke.

"The initiative is hoped to improve road safety as discourse emerged on accidents involving heavy vehicles and efforts to prevent collisions, " he says in a MalaysiaKini report.


Recent years have seen a distressing increase in fatal accidents involving large vehicles, a trend that persists despite government efforts to curb such incidents.

On May 13, a devastating crash in Teluk Intan, Perak, resulted in nine fatalities. A Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) truck carrying 18 personnel from Unit 5 Sungai Senam collided with a rock-laden lorry, with eight deaths occurring at the scene and one more at Teluk Intan Hospital.

Further compounding the issue, a complex five-vehicle pile-up on the North-South Motorway (Plus) on December 23 led to seven deaths and thirty-three injuries. This incident involved two lorries, a car, an MPV, and a tour bus transporting 27 passengers.

Regarding people’s mobility, Loke emphasized the government's priority on resolving first-mile and last-mile connectivity issues, boosting public transport usage, alleviating congestion, and expediting commutes.

The minister, nevertheless clarified that a drone mobility strategy is not currently a pressing matter, given the technology's early stage and projected 10-15 year development timeframe.

“There were many challenges to drone mobility that needed to be determined first, such as a legal framework as well as technological and operational issues,” he was quoted as saying.