KUALA LUMPUR: Prasarana Malaysia Bhd will be doing many things everywhere, all at once, in order to improve its rail service reliability so that commuters will not see more than six major disruptions a year.
This is the takeaway after it announced that it aspired to increase the Mean Kilometres Between Failures (MKBF) for the Kelana Jaya LRT, Ampang LRT, Kajang MRT and KL Monorail.
MKBF is the global indicator for the reliability of rail services and enables an immediate comparison on how well a system is operated in order to minimise disruptions so that commuters of the Kelana Jaya LRT, Ampang LRT, Kajang MRT and KL Monorail will not be frequently exposed to service disruptions that last for more than five minutes.
Any incident that is five minutes or longer will count as a significant disruption, and will be logged under the MKBF system that is now in force.
At Prasarana’s Hari Raya open house here yesterday, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said Prasarana had set an MKBF of 1,000,000 for the Kelana Jaya LRT, Ampang LRT and Kajang MRT, while the 8.6km-long KL Monorail will be given a target of 150,000 by the third quarter of 2026.
Last year, these three urban rail lines recorded MKBF figures ranging from 151,000 to 178,000, while the KL Monorail achieved only 84,000.
With a dismal figure of 151,000km between failures, the Kelana Jaya line trains must be 6.7 times more reliable by 2026 as it hopes to reach the 1,000,000 mark. In Malaysia, a rail network that achieves an MKBF of 1,000,000 will typically have six or fewer significant disruptions a year.
Also present during yesterday’s event were Prasarana chairman Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim and Prasarana president and group CEO Mohd Azharuddin Mat Sah.
Prasarana’s ambitious journey calls for cultural transformation that includes longer maintenance hours, more money spent on maintenance and hiring of engineers, and greater use of predictive technologies that include artificial intelligence.
“Moving on from just scheduled maintenance, we will be increasingly looking at predictive maintenance, possibly aided by artificial intelligence,” said Azharuddin. Loke said greater focus on maintenance was one lesson Malaysia could learn from other world-class operators such as Singapore’s SMRT Corporation Ltd, a multi-modal public transport operator operating bus and rail services.
“Singapore is doing much better, averaging two million (MKBF).
“We are learning from them on how they overcame the problems they encountered many years ago,” said Loke, adding that greater emphasis on maintenance could lead to shorter operating hours on some days to allow more work to be done on the system.
“We are studying how to minimise disruptions to commuters. The last few trains of the day typically have very low passenger volume, so we will look into this.”
Concurrently with ongoing rectification and maintenance programmes are the impending arrival of new four-car trains for the Kelana Jaya LRT in the third quarter of this year, which should shorten the intervals between trains to three minutes during peak hours by September.
In the mid- to long-term horizon, Prasarana plans to overhaul 50 train sets on the Ampang LRT progressively until 2027, while conducting mid-life refurbishment for 34 trains on Kelana Jaya between 2024 and 2029.
In an effort to demonstrate its openness towards change and excellence, Prasarana is sharing its performance indicators with the public through myrapid.com.my/rapid-rail-performance.
Previously, Prasarana provided weekly updates on key areas related to its rail and bus services only to the Transport Ministry.
MKBF data will be updated on the 20th of each month. Updates on other operational aspects such as ridership, load factor and availability of station facilities such as escalators and elevators will be made on Wednesdays at 5pm.
