KTM Komuter Problems

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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. After all, waiting in the wings are integration plans between LRT, MRTand Komuter lines. Why bother integrating if the Komuter service cannot handle the traffic?

Klang Valley’s Rail Transport of the Future

Like many residents of the Klang Valley or Greater Kuala Lumpur, I've been eagerly anticipating what the future of our metro system beyond the two unintegrated LRT lines and the ever inadequate KTM Komuter. But good news is in the offing, as the goverment has announced extensions to the two LRT lines extending into Subang Jaya and Puchong. Also this year they've almost finalised the alignment of the Sungai Buloh - Kajang MRT line, one of two higher capacity metro lines planned. The other circle line around KL is to be announced middle of this year.

SO, for public interest, to give an overall picture, I've used Google Maps to map out the monorail line, the two LRT lines with the more or less finalised extension alignments, the KTM Komuter lines in black (limited to KL, PJ and whatever I can fit in that google map in a rectangle already covered by other) and the tentative Sungai Buloh - Kajang MRT line. The KTM Komuter lines go much further to thefar west towards Klang, north towards Kuala Kubu Baru and south to Seremban.


View KLTransitMap in a larger map

If you don't know already, the current metro system is not integrated; meaning that there is no way you can interchange with another line without buying another ticket. There's is a current project to intergrate the Kelana Jaya, Ampang and monorail lines, BUT he Public Land Transport Commision (SPAD) has no plans now or in the immediate future for the KTM Komuter to integrate with the other urban rail systems. That's a real pity because if you look at the map I labouriously drew out, KTM lines cover key populated areas that the new MRT lines do not.

Also, if you've never ridden on the KTM Komuter, now's not the time to start. I once tried taking a train from MId Valley KTM Komuter Station to KL Sentral, it took 45 minutes for an almost fully packed train to arrive despite electronic signages posting estimated arrival times of 30 minutes ago. Calling the service unreliable would be a compliment, hence many are eagerly waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel to come (that's a railway tunnel in this case), when more trains begin to be commissioned end of 2011.

KL has moved to the West

Examining the whole network of MRT and LRT extension lines, what you notice is that the economic centre of the Klang Valley or Greater Kuala Lumpur is slowly creeping west. Yes, the LRT lines will stretch to around 40km each and the first MRT line is over 50km. That is looong. At current speeds for the LRT, riding from end to end would take close to an hour and a half. Pity us. Yet by design, the centre of the whole network is around the KL city centre, because that's where all the interchanges are.

Case study: If I live in Pusat Bandar Puchong, that’s the area around IOI mall, and I want to go to say 1 Utama, one of Klang Valleys’s finest malls. I’ll either take the Ampang line way down south to the Putra Heights interchange, hop onto the Kelana Jaya Line, interchange with the future MRT circle line then I’m to interchange again on my final line, the Sungai Buloh – Kajang MRT line where the 1 Utama station is on. The alternative is to go east then north on the Ampang line, interchange to the future MRT Circle line, and then interchange SB-Kajang line once more. My feet get sore for riding so long.

Obviously, what I’m alluding to is that there needs to be a North South line over the west of Kuala Lumpur, right over Petaling Jaya, Subang or Puchong. Ideally, depending on how developed the southern corridor gets and how much money’s left in the government coffers(none), that line can be extended south east forming some kind of outer Klang Valley railway loop. Wishful thinking I know, but we should always strive for the ideal.

Now for a case of so close yet so far, do you see how the 2 LRT extensions seem to interchange at Putra Heights while making its way south on either side of the Klang river. The lines service USJ on the west and Puchong on the east. It’s good that the LRT services Puchong and USJ this far south but the two almost parallel makes the far away Putra Heights interchange a chore to get to. People who want to get to Summit USJ from IOI mall have to ride roughly 15 km, and that could be 30 minutes too long.

The Sunway Link

I have a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone solution though. Build a line linking an LRT station in north Subang Jaya to another in Bandar Puchong Jaya, whilst snaking its way through one of the densest townships in Klang Valley, Bandar Sunway. It doesn’t have to be LRT; it could be a monorail of high enough capacity.

That’s a people traffic gold mine right there, it’s also what Bandar Sunway residents have been clamouring for all these years. Three universities, a theme park, Sunway Pyramid, the regional mall to rival 1 Utama, 5 star hotels, condos, condos, condos and an industrial zone. They are about to open up a swanky South Quay district to the south of all that, and that means more condos and commercial areas. Even if an MRT line is built in a North South orientation, and if it doesn’t pass through Bandar Sunway, it would be a great loss for everyone, government, business and residents.


View The Sunway Link in a larger map

Anyway, as for alignment, maybe the monorail could start at the LRT station located on Jalan Jengka, fully integrate with it of course. Then following Jalan SS14/8 and 8, it will leap across the busy Jalan Kewajipan and land on Jalan Lagoon Selatan. The final alignment in Bandar Sunway would probably result from a metaphorical fist fight between Sunway Group led by its founder, Dr. Jeffrey Cheah and the SPAD. Maybe a loop around Sunway Lagoon? But eventually, would-be commuters will then ride south to cross the Klang River and roughly keeping parallel with the Damansara Puchong Expressway. Finally, this line will integrate with the Ampang Line station just north of IOI Mall.

Would something like this work? I sincerely hope so.