KUALA LUMPUR, July 25 — Commuters in the city spend quite a bit of time at the various train stations, so why not turn them into “smart compact cities” where you can do your banking, drop off your laundry, etc.?
Rail operator Prasarana said it will be looking to transform its Light Rail Transit (LRT) stations so they are more than just transit points for the public.
Prasarana’s head of media affairs Azhar Ghazali said, “The long-term plan is to create smart compact cities within the public transport network. With this concept, people will not need to travel outside the network to carry out their daily routine.
“Hence, more people will travel on public transport regardless of time. We need to ensure that more services are provided within stations and areas in the vicinity of the stations,” he told Malay Mail Online in an email response.
He said such services could include “laundry services, banking services, postal services, health and medical services, eating and meeting spots.”
According to Azhar, the peak hours for all LRT services in the morning is between 7am and 9am, while the peak travel period in the afternoon is between 4.30pm and 7pm.
According to Prasarana, it had projected additional daily ridership numbers of 130,000 and 170,000 for the extended Sri Petaling and Kelana Jaya LRT lines respectively on top of the existing figures of 170,000 and 250,000.
Last weekend, Prasarana group communications and strategic marketing head Lim Jin Aun was quoted as saying that the extended LRT lines have to date contributed an additional 23,000 in daily ridership numbers.
The figures for the number of passengers travelling daily on the LRT lines during the peak and off-peak periods were not available at the time of writing.
On a recent visit by Malay Mail Online to new LRT stations along the extended Sri Petaling LRT line during off-peak hours on a weekday, the number of users was fairly low.
Turning the stations into “smart compact cities” will definitely attract people to visit the stations during off-peak hours, and add to the convenience of people who already ride the trains.
The 23 new stations for the extended Sri Petaling and Kelana Jaya LRT lines were opened in stages, with all 12 of the latter coming into operation on June 30.
For the Sri Petaling LRT line, four of the new stations were opened last October 31, while four others and the remaining three started operations on March 31 and June 30 respectively.
