"Great Idea: the centre of Kuala Lumpur reaches gridlock at predictable times and congestion pricing will deter or at least spread the traffic," said one city centre resident.

But there are some peculiarly Malaysian issues to be addressed. First, Friday prayers is the catalyst for the city centre to grind to a halt as people leave work at 11:30 to drive to their preferred mosque for prayers - and then again as some of them drive back to work at about 2pm. Then, three hours later, the traffic flow is reversed again as many head home for the beginning of their Friday evening devotions.

There will be a valid argument that to impose congestion charging specific to those rush hours would be, in effect, a tax on the practising of religion.

Thus, in order to avoid that argument, the operating hours will need to be long - exceeding, perhaps, London's 7am-7pm hours.

Cities that successfully introduce congestion charging have to have a comprehensive, inexpensive and welcoming public transport system, integrated across the city. Singapore does, Hong Kong does not which is one reason why the system works in the former and was abandoned in the latter. Simply, if people have to walk, in tropical heat and humidity, for more than two or three minutes - and wait for more than the same - for a bus to a station, they will use their cars or a taxi. If they use their own cars, they need somewhere to leave them. Kuala Lumpur has virtually no car parking at any of its stations - and off-street parking is run by a small number of cartels; on street parking is run by criminal gangs who threaten drivers that their cars will be damaged if they do not pay the gangs - even in metered spaces. There are no cycle parks, secure or otherwise. Motorcycles, once boarded, are not left at stations but ridden into town.

Road pricing must not exclude motorcycles. In Malaysia national and local governments and even private corporations provide extraordinary concessions for motorcyclists ranging from zero or very low road tax, zero enforcement of parking laws, frequently zero parking fees, zero road tolls. Yet in central Kuala Lumpur there are few vehicles that are unscathed by scrapes with motorcycles ridden by those with no regard for the law, no regard for other road users and seemingly no regard for themselves. Kuala Lumpur's motorcyclists are a menace: riding the wrong way down one way streets, shooting traffic lights, making illegal turns, riding on pavements, parking so as block pavements, failing to stop (in many case failing to slow) at junctions and at traffic lights gathering in clumps in front of the first line of cars, only to pull away slowly and cause stop-start accidents behind them as drivers watching the lights find stationary or slow moving bikes where they expect to place their cars. On highways, it is commonplace to see a motorbike travelling on the hard shoulder, the wrong way and it's even more common to see a motorcycle coming the wrong way down the side of the road in the country, often ridden without a helmet. Plans to ban motorcycles from KL city centre during certain peak times were quietly abandoned despite the primary purpose being to reduce the number of drive-by bag snatching. It is therefore imperative that motorcycles are not regarded as a political issue but as a significant part of the problem of overcrowding and safety on city streets.

Malaysians are used to toll-roads. Therefore the concept of road pricing is already well established. But Malaysians are also used to finding ways to avoid tolls. To the eyes of those who consider time to have value is it incredible that a near-empty highway (toll USD0.30) runs alongside Ampang Road - no toll but drivers sit in nose to tail traffic for, depending on day, time and weather, as much as an hour and a half instead of - literally - three minutes on the highway. Taxi drivers on a flat-fee (arranged at counters) drive miles out of their way to avoid highway tolls of around USD0.20. To be effective, then, the congestion charges need to be applied to all entry routes - and physical barriers placed at non-entry points: legal, non-physical restrictions simply won't work. Malaysians habitually disregard road laws.

Kuala Lumpur is unusual amongst capital cities: it has a large residential population right in the heart of the city. Provision needs to be made for those residents to be able to enter and leave their homes. But businesses must not be provided with the same courtesy. If the chairman of a company drives to his place of work, he must not be favoured any more than his office junior. However, such a policy will be heavily opposed: thinking one is outside the relevant class for certain laws is a common fault amongst businessmen.

Because of toll-roads, drivers are used to using a pre-paid toll card. The Touch and Go card is also used for car parking and public transport services, providing a high level of integration. But it often breaks: just last week, the car park at Kuala Lumpur International Airport's Low Cost Carrier Terminal lost its TnG connection leading to a queue of frustrated drivers, unable to back up to get to a non-TnG machine because a queue had formed behind them. The overhead readers for the dashboard-mounted transmitters (or something else at the TAG autogates) often break, forcing drivers to remove their card from the transmitter whilst approaching the barrier - a safety hazard - so that they can place it against the TnG proximity card reader.

The TAG transmitter costs MYR120 - that's far too much for many drivers (although, arguably, if they can't afford that one wonders how they afford a car in the first place). That means that the vast majority of road users rely on a hand-held TnG card - and that means a slower throughput at barriers. London's system of numberplate recognition is much quicker and smoother - but it is also extremely expensive for cities with many entry points - and the underlying technology is very complex - it must not be introduced unless it actually works and will continue to work. KL's history here is poor: a comprehensive, city-wide traffic camera scheme is under investigation because within a matter of months, many of the cameras were no longer functioning and no one was doing anything significant about it. There is a cultural reason for this: no one takes responsibility - and no one demands proper effective action from staff or contractors. It's seen as discourteous to tell someone to get off his bum and do his job. If a road pricing scheme is to work, then there is no room for failure and those responsible for it have to change the culture to realise that it's OK to sack staff or terminate contracts and claim compensation for under- or non-performance.

But the TAG system is vital to the success of the scheme so as to reduce delays at tolls. Unlike Singapore, where the congestion area is small with few access points, Kuala Lumpur sprawls - and so does its traffic and there are many access points: it is only by extending the TAG autogate system that the plan will be implemented. Singapore has numberplate recognition in addition to its AUTOPASS system (proximity cards) that auto-debit a pre-paid account.

The next problem is data security: the second reason the Hong Kong road pricing scheme was withdrawn was because it used number-plate recognition similar to London and similar to London did not have a pre-payment scheme. The lack of a pre-payment scheme is a disastrous lack of planning on the part of London. It is actually a major inconvenience to find a place to pay the toll or to have to go on line to do it before 9pm that day to avoid a penalty payment. The toll is fine, the inconvenience is annoying to a degree that those who have not suffered it cannot imagine: as a visitor to London, finding a pay-station is actually remarkably difficult and can easily take 15 minutes (which, when your car is parked on a time-limited meter, is an additional cost).

The Hong Kong experiment terminated when wives began to find out where their husbands had been from the record of cameras they had passed.

The fact that this information is collected means that there is the opportunity for corruption: to give an example, a Malaysian company bought a car and registered it: the very next day the company received a call saying that the caller understood that the company had bought a new car and asking if it had a car to dispose of - it is difficult to imagine where that information - including an direct, unlisted phone number for the director who drives the car - came from if not within the government department handling the documentation; since registration of mobile phones became a requirement, spam telephone calls have increased exponentially - with the caller having the name of the account holder as well as the number proving that the calls are not to random numbers - again, the place that this information is collated is in a government department; an e-mail address entered in a form, and used only for that one form submitted to a government department, has been receiving spam - again, the only place that address could have been released from is within a government office. The Malaysian government is trying hard to reduce corruption at all levels, a campaign begun by Abdullah Badawi although he received little recognition for it. But these instances go on. The corruption between local authority parking enforcement officers and criminal gangs over on-street parking is an example of how linked the criminal fraternity and enforcement is. Therefore it is imperative that data is encrypted and cannot be accessed by anyone other than a small - audited - number of people with specific security clearance. The ability to track the movements of a person by his car will not be lost on criminal gangs and must be designed out at the beginning of the process.

Finally, the number of outlets to "top up" TnG cards must be increased dramatically. Although those with local bank accounts can use modified ATM machines at banks to add value, it is still necessary to re-charge cards on the hoof. There are very few places to top up a card in Central Kuala Lumpur: even the monorail stations, which accept TnG for payment, do not have a top-up service. Nor do most car parks that accept the card. This leads to the bizarre situation that car parks refuse entry to those with a card without sufficient balance for a long stay. Many road toll booths have no capability to recharge cards on the highway - where, of course, there are no or very few ATMs even for those who do have bank accounts. Or rather their staff say they cannot do it: as some can, it seems strange that others with apparently similar technology "cannot."

KL's public transport system has improved dramatically in the past decade but it remains disconnected, especially from suburban areas. In town, traffic militates against bus-use - but so does the fact that it's actually quite difficult to work out how to get a bus from A-B. The buses are now clean and reasonably maintained - a big change from a few years ago - and very cheap. But improved integration between the monorail, the suburban overhead and the city underground systems is essential even at the expense of providing walkways in the style of Hong Kong.

For that is at the heart of KL's traffic problems: no one walks. The pavements are crowded with stalls, motorcycles, parked cars etc. There is little shade or shelter from the periodic downpours. Walkways interlinking shopping centres and office complexes are needed to compliment a policy designed to keep people out of their cars. Unless that happens, people will continue to use their cars to travel maybe a single kilometre from place to place just to stay out of the weather.

There is no doubt at all that the government is on the right track with proposals for congestion pricing. Done right, it's a huge boon to the city: both London and Singapore have proved that with intra-city travel being quick and pollution being noticeably reduced.

Done wrong, or done selectively, and it just creates a different set of problems. Around the world, all those problems have manifested themselves at one time or another. Malaysia needs to look at what everyone else has done and what went wrong - and to build a world class system that works from day one. It's very good at building world class systems: KL's Smart Tunnel (a road system that turns into a storm drain when the monsoon rains threaten the city centre) but not so good at thinking through the consequences of its actions (policies are often implemented and then constantly tinkered with as unseen events arise). Malaysia is extraordinarily inventive and no doubt it will try to find a Malaysian solution to what it will consider a Malaysian problem. But it's not a local problem and it's not a novel one.

But it's a very important one and the government needs courage to make it work in the face of what will be widespread public criticism from a population that is used to doing what it wants regardless of the effects on others. As always, a strong commitment to the concepts and good enforcement is needed and the government must not back down. That's why it's important that the Bill comes out of the Prime Minister's Office not from the transport department.

With enforcement planned to be an MYR2,000 fine and / or six months' jail for defaulters or evaders, that has to be enforced in such a way that enforcement officers cannot be bribed in the way that roadside roadblocks often are.

The Bill will touch many aspects of Malaysian society and culture in a way that few other measures have the capacity to do. Aside from the technical and support issues, it's going to be a rough ride as self-interest groups all seek exclusion or exemption and to prevent abuse.

It's going to be interesting.