PETALING JAYA: KL Sentral, Bukit Bintang and KLCC are the top three most popular destination stations among light rail transit (LRT), mass rapid transit (MRT) and monorail commuters, official data shows.
Statistics from the government’s data portal data.gov.my shows 6.84 million commuters ending their journey at KL Sentral station from January to September this year.
In second and third place are stations located in the Golden Triangle – Kuala Lumpur’s main commercial and shopping area – namely Bukit Bintang and KLCC.
Bukit Bintang recorded a ridership of 5.7mil while KLCC had 5.27mil.
An analysis by The Star found that KL Sentral station had about 25,000 riders daily, while Bukit Bintang station and KLCC station received some 21,000 and 19,000 respectively.
Rapid Rail Sdn Bhd operates three LRT lines – Ampang, Kelana Jaya and Sri Petaling – as well as the KL Monorail and MRT Kajang and Putrajaya lines.
The services encompass 151km total rail length across 153 stations with more than 700,000 daily riderships.
The Kelana Jaya LRT, which started operating in September 1998, is the most popular of the five lines.
It recorded ridership of 6.3mil last month, followed by Kajang MRT (5.71mil), Ampang LRT (4.28mil), Putrajaya MRT (2.99mil) and KL Monorail (1.52mil).
Post MCO recovery
An analysis of longer-term figures since January 2019 shows steady growth in the number of commuters taking the LRT, MRT and Monorail following the lifting of the Covid-19 movement control order (MCO).
Since the last Movement Control Order (MCO) 3.0 on May 2020, the ridership figures for Rapid KL trains have been steadily growing.
From June 2021 until September 2023, the total monthly ridership of KL Monorail line experienced the highest growth rate of 9.67% per month.
The ridership for the Kajang MRT line meanwhile grew at 8.84% per month, followed by Kelana Jaya LRT line (7.78%) and Ampang LRT line (6.76%).
However, recent ridership numbers are still not at par with the pre-Covid ridership numbers.
In 2019 for example, the highest daily ridership pre-Covid was recorded on Oct 11, 2019, at 352,000 riders for the Kelana Jaya LRT line.
In comparison, the highest ridership recorded post-MCO was 20.4% lower at 280,000 recorded on Aug 30 this year, also on the Kelana Jaya line.
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