Potholes is nothing new in Malaysia. In fact, potholes had caused many accidents, from minor ones to even deaths.
In an effort to fix potholes that plague the roads in Selangor, the state government had introduced the Smart Road Asset Management System (SRAMS), where the authorities will be deploying drones equipped with 360-degree cameras to monitor and identify damaged roads which are then relayed back to local authorities.
According to Selangor Menteri Besar Dato’ Seri Amirudin Shari, the SRAMS system will be combined with the Intelligent Response Selangor (IRS) to allow public road users to report potholes they encounter.
In addition, users will be given the option to attach pictures to the report. Amirudin also said the public can soon make reports on social media using dedicated hashtags.
“Through this system, user can not only file reports on a road’s quality and the shape of the ground surface, but also include reports of other accessories such as lights, traffic lights and road dividers.” he said.
For now, the system is only being utilised by the Selangor Public Works Department but will be expanded to other Selangor State Local Authorities.
“We will see how it goes, perhaps by the middle of the year we will begin to combine the system with all PBTs, as for the time being it is still with the Selangor Public Works Department,” Amirudin said.
He added that the system will be available for the other Selangor State Local Authorities sometime in June.
At the moment, potholes can be easily reported via Waze, but why isn’t Waze being utilised by the authorities?
Waze is among the popular navigation apps in Malaysia and it allows for quick and easy reporting within the app itself. Following the report, the location of the pothole will be automatically geotagged and sent to the relevant authorities.
This way was so convenient that from August 2017 to June 2020, there were more than 100,000 reports regarding road-related issues. According to Senator Edry Faizal on Twitter, 69.51% of the issues have been resolved with 22.13% of the issues were being worked on. Only 8.36% of them were yet to be addressed as of 28 December 2020.
Meanwhile, Waze also relies on the public for information, hence, there is no need to invest in other high tech equipment like drones and 360-degree cameras. More importantly, there is no need to maintain separate systems like SRAMS and IRS.
Despite its advantages, the local authorities does not seem to be getting on board with Waze for cities programme. So far, the Public Works Department (JKR) has 11 different ways for the public to report road-related issues, but none of them is as easy, efficient or seamless to use as Waze.
What do you think about this? Share your thoughts!
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