Yeoh: Bullet train project is environment-friendly

Eddy: I love to see this happen.

Eddy: “tens of billion ringgit”savings in fuel subsidy? According to the law of conservation of energy, energy just can't be recreated (Note: In advanced physics, energy do get annihilated). Savings in one area must be causing the excessive consumptions in other places.

Eddy: Hoo Haa, RM8 Billion project!

Eddy: Bottomline is, I just want to have total access to every details of the project. Costing, timing, subcontractor selection process, billing/markup/margin/etc, covenants of every legally binding contracts, blah blah. In other words, the project must be totally transparent to us, for us to judge whether it is truly beneficial.

Eddy: Yeap, I know total transparency is not going to happen, I just murmuring myself here.

P/S- "Environment Friendly" is a globally, widely abused phrase nowadays. Quantifying the impact is the way to go.


Yeoh: Bullet train project is environment-friendly

Business Times, 12th April 2008

YTL Corp Bhd, a construction and energy group, says the government is supportive of its plan to build a bullet train between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore as it makes economic sense.

It is also a project that the people seem to want, managing director Tan Sri Francis Yeoh said.

“This project is economically viable, so I think the government will listen to the people and put this project on an urgent basis again. Nobody looks at it as a mega project, an artificial project that you do for prestige,” he told reporters after launching the YTL organised Climate Change Week 2008.

When pressed by reporters as to when he expects to get the greenlight for the project, he said: “I think the government is supportive of this project. We’ll see.”

The previous transport minister, Datuk Seri Chan Kong Choy, had said in January that the government was conducting a social impact study on the project, said to be about RM8 billion because it involves land acquisition.


“We are for it (the project),” he’d told Reuters in an interview then.

YTL’s bullet train plan involves travel time between KL and Singapore being cut to just 90 minutes compared with existing trains which take about seven hours.

Yeoh said that the bullet train project would not only save the government “tens of billion ringgit” on fuel subsidies over the long term, but would also cut down the country’s carbon emission significantly.

“This is an environment-friendly project,” he remarked.