KUALA LUMPUR, 25 January – Prasarana Malaysia Berhad (Prasarana), which is celebrating its 15th year in operation in 2017, has renewed its commitment in the transformation of public transport services for Malaysia; pledging further improvement in its service while enhancing connectivity and improving connectivity throughout the nation.

With the continual enhancement of the public transport services facilities, Prasarana, which commenced operations in 2002 as a special purpose institution mandated by the Government to upgrade public transport services in the country, has set a target of RM17 billion in economic returns for the nation – an increase from RM 13.3 billion that it had achieved in 2016.

Components in the calculation of Economic Benefits include the User Impact (which is the Passenger Time Cost Savings and Vehicle Operating Cost Savings), the Non-User Impact (which is the Time Cost Savings for Non-User), the Environmental Impact (which is the Carbon Footprint Savings) and the Multiplier Effects. Speaking at a media briefing in Kuala Lumpur today, Prasarana President and Group CEO, Dato’ Sri Azmi Abdul Aziz also shared the Group’s transformation plan to optimize resources and capabilities within the Group to generate revenue outside fare collection through monetization of its assets, providing consultancy services within and outside the country and a host of commercial activities to be undertaken by its subsidiaries.

Providing world class public transport service for the people will, however, remain as its main priority for Prasarana especially in the operations of Rapid KL trains and bus services, which are operated by Rapid Rail and Rapid Bus respectively. Rapid Rail currently operates the Ampang LRT Line, Sri Petaling LRT Line, Kelana Jaya LRT Line and the Monorail Line. It is also the operator for the MRT Sungai Buloh Kajang Line, which had opened its first phase of services with 12 stations between Sungai Buloh and Semantan on December 16 last year. Phase 2 will be opened in July; covering 19 more stations between Semantan and Kajang.Rapid Bus currently operates the bus services of Rapid KL, which included the environmental-friendly Bus Rapid Transit – Sunway Line, Rapid Penang for Penang and Butterworth, Rapid Kuantan for Kuantan and its neighbouring areas, and Rapid Kamunting for areas around Taiping and Kamunting.

Rapid Rail currently commands an average daily ridership of 537,757 passengers with the LRT Kelana Jaya Line providing the biggest portion of 254,854 passengers daily. LRT Ampang Line has a daily ridership of 185,131 passengers and Monorail Line manages an average has 63,778 passengers each day. The MRT Sungai Buloh Kajang Line, which opens its Phase 1 operations on December 16, currently manages 33,994 passengers daily. The rising trend in ridership numbers is expected to surge further when MRT Sungai Buloh opens its second phase between Semantan and Kajang, covering 19 new stations in July.Rapid Bus manages an average of 498,193 passengers daily including 386,746 passengers by Rapid KL for areas in Klang Valley and Selangor.

Rapid Penang has a daily ridership of 94,185 passengers while Rapid Kuantan manages an average daily ridership of 11,036 passengers. The Bus Rapid Transit – Sunway Line has a daily ridership of 5,382 passengers while Rapid Kamunting, which will celebrate its one-year anniversary in March, manages an average of 844 passengers a day.While declaring that there will be continual enhancement of stage bus services to further improve efficiency and system delivery, Prasarana also sees a huge potential of BRT services with the Group being an active part of the project.Despite impressive score in the standard of service reliability for both bus and rail services last year, Dato’ Azmi stressed the commitment of Prasarana to strive further for even better results to meet the increasing expectations of the Malaysian public.

For 2016, the service reliability for Rapid Rail stood at 99.7 percent while Rapid Bus had a commendable score of 98 percent, which are calculated based on international standard set by CoMET Nova for rail and the International Bus Benchmarking Group (IBBG) for bus.The Guest Satisfaction Index (GSI) for 2016, which is based on surveys conducted by an independent party, is 82.8 percent for Rapid Rail while Rapid Bus had a better score of 87.8 percent.