Govt target more people to ride on public transport

I hope the implementation is set right to achieve the goal. Let's watch out for it.

600,000 Target For Public Transport Ridership In Klang Valley By End 2012

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 17 (Bernama) -- The government is targeting a ridership of 600,000 people for public transport services in the Klang Valley by the end of 2012 under the National Key Result Areas (NKRA) initiatives, says Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat.

Currently, there is a ridership of about 240,000 for public transport in the Klang Valley, estimated to represent some 10 to 12 per cent of the total population in the country's busiest area.

The NKRA initiatives were launched in July this year by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak as part of the Government Transformation Programme (GTP) leading towards achieving Vision 2020 and improving government delivery to the people.

"Under the NKRA for public transport, we are targeting to increase it to 25 per cent of the total population in the area or 600,000 ridership, which is 2.5 times from the current level. It's a tall order for us but we are working hard to achieve our target," Ong told Bernama.

He revealed that his ministry was comprehensively addressing several problems related to public transport in the Klang Valley based on five key strategies.

They include debottlenecking public transport capacity, stimulating demand via "pull approaches", reducing heavy vehicle congestion in the central business district (CBD), restructuring regulations for long-term sustainability and having future demand management through 'push approaches".

Ong also said that a Land Public Transport Authority would be established and operational by the end of next year as a single industry "captain" to coordinate efforts across the entire public transport system.

"This is currently lacking, with 12 ministries and various agencies involved in different aspects across the entire public transport system," he said.

Ong said the current public transport services in the Klang Valley had already been filled to the brim, particularly rail services (KTM Komuter, RapidKL, LRT and Monorail).

Such a pressing situation would demand that there was a need to create space for an additional 360,000 people of the population to migrate to public transport from private vehicles in the Klang Valley, he explained.

"Based on our analysis, from the 360,000 ridership, 58 per cent or 207,000 will come from rail and 42 per cent or 153,000 will come from buses. The biggest contributors will come from rail, with KTM Komuter contributing around 95,000 passengers, Kelana Jaya LRT line 62,000 and Ampang LRT line 33,000," he said.

"In order to debottleneck the capacity of a system already at its limit, the capacity on the KTM Komuter and LRT lines will be increased by 1.7 times to four times, depending on specific lines," he said.

Ong said the service of new four-car trainsets on the Kelana Jaya LRT line, the most congested rail line in the Klang Valley, would be introduced by the end of this month, thus enhancing the current two-car trainsets and providing additional capacity to carry more passengers.

"With this, we hope to reduce the waiting time from three minutes to 2.5 minutes, running a mixed fleet of two-car and four-car trainsets. With these initiatives, we expect to triple the capacity, thus enabling ridership during the morning peak period to increase from the current level of 34,000 to 98,000 when fully deployed," he said.

Ong said KTM Berhad had also bought five units of Electric Train Sets (ETS) to serve the intercity Ipoh-KL-Seremban route by April next year.

"However, during peak hours, some of these ETS units will be utilised for the KTM Komuter service. One unit has already arrived and others are expected to arrive before April next year," he said.

Ong said the Bus Expressway Transit (BET) services on four corridors in the Klang Valley would also be launched by the first quarter of next year.

The four corridors represent the four under-utilised highways in the Klang Valley where commuters will enjoy a 55 per cent reduction in the average point-to-point journey times.

Apart from that, a dedicated right-of-way (special lane) for buses across 12 major corridors in the Klang Valley will be introduced. These 12 corridors will in total carry 35,000 to 50,000 passengers during the morning peak hours or between six and nine per cent of the total public transport ridership by 2012.

"The size of the existing bus fleet will be increased by 850 buses, close to doubling the number of buses operated by RapidKL today. This will improve services on current routes and provide services to 53 new routes in areas currently unserved," he added.

He said that in order to draw people to public transport, the key initiatives would include introducing an integrated ticketing platform and fare structure under the "1Ticket, 1Seamless Journey" concept across all 16 operators in the Klang Valley.

"On top of that, 6,800 new parking spaces across 14 key rail stations outside the urban core areas would be added, besides enhancing feeder services into rail stations as well as upgrading high traffic stations and terminals," he said.

To cut down the number of vehicles in the Central Business District (CBD), three major integrated transport terminals (ITTs) outside the city core, such as Bandar Tasik Selatan (South), Gombak (East) and Sungai Buloh (North), will be created.

The ITT Bandar Tasik Selatan is already under construction while the ITT Gombak, which will be built on a fast-track basis, is expected to be ready by the end of 2010. A third ITT, which may be located in Sungai Buloh, will serve north-bound inter-city express buses beyond 2012.

The south and east ITTs will enable the authorities to divert 750 inter-city buses from the south of Peninsular Malaysia and the east coast from the city centre every day.

Within the city centre, Ong said, there would be two types of public transport hubs -- the intracity terminal hubs at Pasarama Kota, Plaza Rakyat and Pudu, to facilitate the flow of traffic from the suburbs into the city and 14 "Hentian Akhir Bandar" (HAB) or City Final Terminals -- which will facilitate the movement of passengers and public transport vehicles within the city centre to reduce congestion.

Ong also said that in order to manage the demand through the push strategy, aggressive "push" initiatives would be introduced to increase the attractiveness of public transport compared to private vehicles.

"The majority of the initiatives will take time to materialise but in the short term, the public can expect some improvements following introduction of some initiatives which have already been introduced and are to be introduced," he said.

Among them are the realignment of RapidKL bus routes to minimise transfers, launched in October this year, and the reduction of the KTM Komuter waiting time from 20 minutes to 15 minutes through optimising the deployment of trainsets last month.

-- BERNAMA