City Hall to offer free bicycles for public soon
Published on: Sunday, February 19, 2017
Kota Kinabalu: City Hall will soon offer free bicycles for the public to use, the first of its kind in Malaysia.Mayor Datuk Yeo Boon Hai said the service is expected to start within a month from now and would be launched by the Chief Minister.Yeo said he had wanted to wait for a while until the Chief Minister launched it but was just too excited that he had to make the announcement himself on Saturday.
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Speaking to reporters after officiating at the Malaysia Green Building Confederation (MGBC) Sabah Chapter MS1525 & ByLaw 38A CPD Seminar in a hotel here, Yeo said, for starters, 20 bicycles would be made available and under the first stage, a bicycle rack would be placed at the City Hall compound.Explaining the mechanism of the service, Yeo said one has to have the City Hall 'touch and go' card with RM200 as deposit to use the bicycle for 24 hours.The money is refundable after the bicycle is returned, he said.Yeo also stated that since the cycling will be done on the road, City Hall has already come up with a scheme to buy a special insurance coverage for those who want to use the service.
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Yeo said they plan to place bicycle racks in major hotels in the city as well as in Tanjung Lipat and in front of the Grace Court apartment in Sembulan."We have 150 bicycles now in our store," he said, adding that any other organisation wanting to support the programme could do so by donating to City Hall.
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In relation to it, he called upon engineers, architects and developers of new residential developments to take into consideration City Hall's guidelines on having a dedicated pavement for both pedestrians and cyclists."Probably this will be the first in Malaysia for all new residential areas to have their cycling lane…the pavement for walking will be for cycling also. So it is one of the many steps towards a clean, green and liveable city," he said, adding that residents would thus not have to go out to the main road to cycle and could do it within their residential area.Earlier, Yeo said the State Government had also approved a 20km new bicycle lane for City Hall to implement.He said they are planning to have it run from the roundabout near the Wisma Perindustrian-Sports Complex-Tshung Tsin School, Dah Yeh Villa and end at Bukit Padang where the hill cycling track is located."However, we need cooperation from the Public Works Department to realise it. Hopefully they will agree to share the road with us," he said.Meanwhile, Yeo hoped the seminar would come up with a solution that is agreed to by all on the guidelines for roof insulation, which could then be submitted to City Hall."By August, we will adopt it," he said.In his speech earlier, Yeo informed that from August this year, all new building plan submissions to City Hall, for both residential and non-residential buildings, must be compliant to overall transfer thermal value (OTTV) and roof insulation.He said the goal of OTTV assessment is to minimise the energy consumption by reducing the solar heat coming through the building envelope, thus improving the energy efficiency of the building. "By proper regulation of building envelope, this will help to ease the cooling load generated by the air-conditioning unit and reduce the Building Energy Index (BEI)," he said, adding that BEI is the medium to determine the energy consumption in the building whilst OTTV is an essential factor as it can be a huge influence that reflects the energy consumption of the buildings.Yeo said there is a need to minimise solar heat coming through the roof by way of roof insulation, which is also one of the most important design decisions for energy efficient buildings, the reason being the roof plane receives the most solar radiation and for the longest period through the day.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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