An overview of the practice of traffic impact assessment in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia is a developing country with rapid urbanisation, unceasing development and growing expansion of road network, connecting all the major cities in the country. However, in the downfall, traffic congestions, road accidents and fatalities are still at an alarming level, so to control the traffic impacts generated, the government uses Traffic Impact Assessment (TIA) as planning tool to assess the feasibility and rationality of a development. In Malaysia, TIA has been applied since early 90', with the first draft TIA guidelines proposed in 2005 and was revised in 2011 by Road Engineering Association of Malaysia (REAM) to the guidelines for TIA used today. TIA is about assessing the adverse impacts generated by a proposed development and mitigating the impacts with the appropriate measurements. Since TIA is adopted, developing countries are still facing various issues which happens also in Malaysia. This study will discuss about those issues and provide a method to assess the performance of TIA in Malaysia by determining what constitute to the best practice from an international standard and where Malaysia stand in the standard. The findings from the study will provide the necessary information for the future amendments in the practice of TIA.