KUALA LUMPUR: Rapid Rail Sdn Bhd is confident that daily ridership for the monorail system here will increase to 65,000 passengers or more once the company completes a decommissioning exercise replacing its aging fleet of two-car trains next year.
Its chief executive officer Abdul Hadi Amran said commuters can also look forward to improved monorail services, with shorter waiting times, once all 12 sets of four-car trains come into full operation.
At present, he said, the KL Monorail service features five sets of four-car trains and five sets of two-car trains, which operate at a frequency of 6.5 minutes.
"Based on the new contract, the delivery of the four-car trains replacing the present fleet of two-car trains will be from March until December next year.
"Apart from boosting the capacity of passengers, the number of daily ridership for our monorail services will also experience an increase with the new sets of trains," he told reporters here today.
During its peak in 2015, the average daily ridership for monorail services reached 65,000 passengers before the figure fell to merely 36,000 passengers last year.
"Hence, I think it is not impossible for us to raise the figure (average of 65,000 passengers daily) or more than that," he said.
He said daily ridership declined further to an average of 19,000 passengers when the Movement Control Order (MCO), followed by Conditional MCO, were implemented early this year.
Abdul Hadi, however, expects ridership to increase gradually after almost all sectors of the economy resumed operations during the Recovery MCO, which came into force on June 10.
He had earlier accompanied Prasarana Bhd chairman Datuk Seri Tajuddin Abdul Rahman to attend a briefing on KL Monorail's operations at Wisma Monorail, before visiting the monorail depot in Brickfields here.
Also present were Prasarana Malaysia group chief operating officer (operation) Muhammad Nizam Alias and group chief technical officer Datin Norlia Noah.
"The five sets of two-car trains are 17-years-old. Prasarana hopes the new cars will improve capacity and (improve) our services, especially during peak hours," Tajuddin said.
It was reported that Prasarana Malaysia and Scomi Sdn Bhd had signed a new deal for the refurbishment of the five four-car train sets and the purchase of new four-car sets in April last year.