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Saturday August 15, 2009

SMART Tunnel - is the public being served?

At Your Service
By DATUK ZOAL AZHA YUSOF
Natural Resources and Environment Ministry Secretary-General


The mega flood-bypass project, which has won various awards, is a unique piece of engineering built to ensure Kuala Lumpur is flood-free.

The rapid pace of development in the last two decades has transformed Kuala Lumpur into a metropolitan city.

It has also stressed its drainage system, which has to cope with the ever-increasing flood discharges during major storms.

Consequently, the people of Kuala Lumpur have been riddled with increasing frequencies of flood occurrences since the mid-1990s.

Between 2000 and 2007, the city was hit by six major floods. Besides huge economic losses, the image of Kuala Lumpur as the up-and-rising modern capital city in Asia was somewhat affected.

There were torrents of complaints and anguish from the people, no doubt. The agencies were highly criticised for the planning, or lack of it.

The Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID), which is under the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, after some indepth research and study, put in place a comprehensive Kuala Lumpur Flood Mitigation Project (KLFMP) in 2003 to address the flood issue.

The KLFMP essentially comprised two projects, namely the Stormwater Management and Road Tunnel (SMART), which is a flood-bypass tunnel, and the Batu-Jinjang flood detention ponds.

These projects were supported by a few other subsidiary projects, all aimed at improving the flood-carrying capacity of Klang River tributaries.

The primary function of SMART is to mitigate floods at the heart of Kuala Lumpur. We had to identify the hotspots that caused the city to come to a halt, which are at and around the vicinity of the Masjid Jamek LRT stations as this is where the overflow of Klang River frequently occurs.

The other is at the Batu-Jinjang Ponds which would effectively handle the overflow at and around the Putra World Trade Centre areas due to over spilling of the Batu and Gombak rivers. The secondary function was to solve the much loathed problem of the city- the traffic congestions.

SMART provides an alternative route to ease traffic congestion between the Kuala Lumpur City Centre around the Kampung Pandan roundabout and the southern gateway at TUDM, Sungei Besi–Seremban Highway.

The construction cost of SMART was RM1.93bil. The Government’s cost amounted to RM1.31bil, while the remaining RM621mil was borne by the contractor, who has been given a 40-year concessionaire period to collect toll through SMART traffic operations, in lieu of the capital investment.

The working principle of SMART is simple. During a heavy downpour, the excess flood water at the confluence of the Ampang River and Klang River at Kampung Berembang will be diverted and detained in the holding pond.

This will then be channelled through the 9.7km tunnel before being discharging and store in the Taman Desa storage pond at the downstream end.

Subsequently, the flood water in the storage pond will be released back to the Klang River via the Kerayong River when the downpour subsides. SMART has a flood storage capacity of three million cubic meters.

There are four modes of SMART Operations. During modes one and two, traffic in the tunnel is not affected.

When the flood levels rise to a level where modes one and two are not able to cope, mode three operation will kick off and traffic in the tunnel will have to be evacuated.

Two hours after a heavy storm subsides, the tunnel can be re-opened to traffic.

However, should the heavy storm persists, then traffic tunnel compartments will be use to channel the excess flood water; this is called ‘mode four operation’.

When this mode kicks off, the tunnel can be used again only after proper de-watering, cleaning and inspection.

This often causes a four-day closure to the tunnel. The public is notified when this is done.

Since SMART began its operations in July 2007, it has handled a total of 79 storm events (50 events in mode two, 28 events in mode three and one event in mode four).

The tunnel has protected Kuala Lumpur from seven major storms. Two such instances were:

> March 22, 2008, when the SMART diverted 1.2 million cu m of flood water at Kampung Berembang away from Kuala Lumpur City Centre.

> March 3, when a major storm caused the water levels of Klang River at Masjid Jamek to rise to a very high levels of just 0.2m below the bank. During this critical storm, SMART diverted 700,000 cu m of flood water at Kampung Berembang. As a result, the Masjid Jamek area and its vicinity were spared from the flood impact.

SMART is truly a unique piece of engineering. As a result, it has won numerous awards, both locally and overseas, such as the Malaysian Construction Industry Excellence Award 2007, the Gold Award from The Association of Consulting Engineering Malaysia in 2008, the Engineering Excellence Awards 2008 from the Association of Consulting Engineers of United Kingdom and British Construction Industry (BCIA) 2008 Awards (International Category).

SMART was also screened by two prestigious television networks – the National Geographic Channel in 2007 and Discovery channel in 2006.

To date, more than 2,000 visitors, including local and foreign dignitaries, have visited SMART and left impressed by its unique functionality and success.

All awards are of no use if the engineering did not fulfil its role – and that role is to serve the people it is built for.

The SMART Tunnel was built to serve Kuala Lumpur, Malaysians and foreign visitors. It was built so that when you are in Kuala Lumpur, you will indeed be able to enjoy the beauty of this city flood-free.

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