Bukit Bintang Walkway

Bukit Bintang Walkway is an elevated walkway connecting the Pavillion Shopping Mall on the Bukit Bintang Road in Kuala Lumpur to the Impiana KLCC Hotel and the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. The walkway runs via Jalan Pinang, Jalan Perak and Jalan Raja Chulan with entry and exit points to the walkway on all three roads.

The walkway is 1,173 metres in length, fully air-conditioned, with windows allowing views over the city.

About Bukit Bintang Walkway

The walkway was opened in 2012 at a reported cost of 100 million MYR. The project was funded by state owned petroleum company Petronas as part of a programme to invest profits from the production of petrol back into beneficial projects in Malaysia.

There were two main reasons why the walkway was constructed. Firstly, because at the time the area between Bukit Bintang and the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre was well known for being an area where tourists had things stolen from them. Wealthier tourists would walk around this area, either back to their hotels or the public transport system, carrying shopping and lots of money to pay for it making them easy and lucrative targets for pick-pockets. The walkway has security officers and CCTV allowing the city authorities to better tackle the problem.

The second reason for building the walkway was to encourage people to walk the short distances between Bukit Bintang and Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre, which is connected to the massive Suria KLCC Shopping Mall by an air-conditioned walkway in a tunnel. As well as being dangerous in terms of crime, it was also difficult and unpleasant for visitors to the city to walk anywhere. As anyone who has been to Kuala Lumpur will know first hand, most areas of Kuala Lumpur are not pedestrian friendly: the climate is hot and humid, the pavements are very narrow, and there are few safe crossing points over major roads. The Bukit Bintang Walkway addresses all those issues, and ironically as Kuala Lumpur becomes an increasingly modern its city planners are starting to realise that walking is the best form of public transport around the city centre. Bangkok has similar walkways in the Siam Square area and we can expect to see more built across South East Asia as time goes on.