Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) may have plans to introduce a road congestion pricing scheme in the city centre when the Klang Valley Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) begins operations, The Edge reports. Authorities are currently studying the details of the proposed scheme, though it said that the collection rate has yet to be finalised.

“We will implement (road pricing). That will be the last initiative to reduce congestion in the city. We are still looking into the details. We have done a few engagements with the people not only on pricing, but more on how to transform our public transportation in Kuala Lumpur,” DBKL urban planning department senior deputy director Nik Mastura Diyana Nik Mohamad told the publication.

She said that the plan to introduce road pricing had been incorporated in the Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2020. The scheme is aimed at reducing the flow of private cars travelling in to the city centre, much like how Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) system works, and encourage people to use public transport.

“This is like what Singapore does. If you go into the city centre at a certain time, which causes congestion, you have to pay,” she said, adding that authorities had been planning to implement a traffic management policy in the city centre as far back as the 1980s, but could not due to the lack of alternative transport.

Phase one of the MRT Sungai Buloh-Kajang (SBK) line between Sungai Buloh and the Semantan station in Damansara Heights is scheduled to begin operations on December 31; a three-month long trial run is set to begin this month. The second phase of the SBK line – from Semantan to Kajang – it set to become operational in July 2017.