Keretapi Tanah Melayu, KTM is the national railway company in Peninsular Malaysia. They inherited the railroad built by the British which consisted of single metre gauge tracks. One branch serves the West Coast and another serves the East coast. Only now, in the 21st century are these lines being upgraded to double track, and only the West Coast line, where the greatest economic impact will be felt.
As you may have guessed, the railways in Malaysia have long been neglected by the government. In the mid 1990s KTM introduced a new intraurban service using existing double electrified track in and around the Klang Valley known as KTM Komuter. The KTM rail corridor covers some very strategic areas in the valley, but over the years, bad maintenance and government neglect let commuters down reducing the service to an unviable public transport mode.
View KTM Komuter in a larger map
I think that unless a major overhaul and new tracks are laid, the KTM Komuter will still disappoint the commuters no matter how many 6-car trains they get. These are my reasons.
As you may have guessed, the railways in Malaysia have long been neglected by the government. In the mid 1990s KTM introduced a new intraurban service using existing double electrified track in and around the Klang Valley known as KTM Komuter. The KTM rail corridor covers some very strategic areas in the valley, but over the years, bad maintenance and government neglect let commuters down reducing the service to an unviable public transport mode.
View KTM Komuter in a larger map
I think that unless a major overhaul and new tracks are laid, the KTM Komuter will still disappoint the commuters no matter how many 6-car trains they get. These are my reasons.
- Too many services utilize the same double tracks. KTM Komuter, Intercity and freight services all share the same line. With the government planning to increase the traffic on all 3 services, the tracks sure are getting crowded. Thus unlike dedicated lines like the LRT or MRT, KTM Komuter will just never carry the same volumes as other intraurban rail.
- With the recent track extensions, KTM Komuter now services Tg. Malim in Selangor’s northern border, Port Klang, Batu Caves and Senawang in Negeri Sembilan. That all amounts to about 200 kilometres of track. I’d say KTM is over extending itself; you need lots of trains to ply a route. And the problem is most of your traffic is in the centre of your line, KL in this case, and the outer fringes of the line get very little.
- A bottleneck in KL. The two Komuter lines itself share around 6km of line and 4 stations the heart of Kuala Lumpur. The ETP plans to have a freight diversion line in Subang but it doesn’t seem enough. A complete bypass of the Klang Valley is better from South Selangor to Rawang.
- Too many stations. The legacy railroad has a lot of stations that resemble shacks by the side of the road and receive practically no traffic. KTM has got to rationalise the number of stations and maybe build some in popular or upcoming areas.
- KTM tracks occupy land with the lowest elevation in some areas and are prone to flooding. When it floods the services come to a standstill.
- Legacy management team. The management team with their old style mentality has to manage the whole train system of Malaysia, and cannot afford to concentrate on Klang Valley. Should Syarikat Prasarana Negara Berhad (SPNB) take over Komuter?
They’ve got to rethink KTM and if or how it can be turned
into an efficient people mover system in the core urban areas.
I'm glad KTM issues are highlighted. The key success is improving train schedule. Having new coaches is only a tip of improvement.
ReplyDelete1. Our KTM komuter track don't support the high speed of our new trains. For example:
The stretch from Shah Alam to Batu Tiga and to Subang Jaya at most times is un-believably slow or prone to stopped waiting for green light.
ETS from Ipoh to Tanjung Malim could average 140kmph while reduce to max 100kmph moving forward to Sungai Buloh.
2. Congestion of much slower intercity trains sharing the same track would make on-time scheduling impossible. For example:
The train from Rawang has to give way to train from Butterworth.
Similarly train to Rawang has to give way to ETS.
3. Despite the hype the new trains has max speed of 140kmph and more torque, actual traveling time has been clocked longer compared to the existing old trains.
So commuters which interchange trains has to bear the brunt of added waiting time.
4. Also worth to mentioned the seat of the new coach is much less comfortable the the old coach.
For the bigger picture KTM commuter service don't seems to be economic viable for now because of 2 main reasons:
The lack (inability) of improvement (shorter) on travelling time.
The lack of fast & efficient system to feed & disperse 2.5 times extra capacity of the new trains.
This covers a wide area of accessibility to trains station, access to coaches, ticketing, messaging for alerts, etc.