One ticket for Monorail and LRT

Rail passengers to buy just one ticket for Monorail and LRT from Nov 30

COMMUTERS on LRT and KL Monorail need just one ticket from Nov 30 when the new Integrated Ticketing System (ITS) is introduced by its operator Syarikat Prasarana Negara Berhad (Prasarana).

Prasarana group managing director Shahril Mokhtar said the new RM115.2mil system, which is referred to as the Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) would only require commuters to buy a single ticket for all three rail services — the Kelana Jaya Line, Ampang Line and the Monorail Line.

“There will be no more queuing to get two or three sets of tickets but just one that will allow for a more convenient and faster travel,” he told reporters at the Bukit Jalil LRT station.

He said Prasarana’s next target would be to incorporate the system with its RapidKL buses and later with KTM Komuter.
For easy travel: (From left) Prasarana Infrastructure development group director Nor Hassan Ismail, Shahril and Abdul Hamid at the media briefing on the ITS intergrated system.

Under the ITS system, commuters can buy a Contactless Smart Card (SCS) for stored value tickets and passes.

The system would also allow customers to buy and reload their tickets online, eliminating queuing at ticket vending machines and counters.

Prasarana will be also introducing loyalty points to reward customers.

“As of today, the system is in place at four LRT stations — Taman Paramount and Abdullah Hukum for the Kelana Jaya Line, Sultan Ismail and Bukit Jalil stations for the Ampang Line. It is on schedule and the project is 62% completed,” said Shahril.

AFC project manager Abdul Hamid Abdullah said the pilot project involving the four stations would start next month and they would proceed to implement the new system in the following months.

“By September, we will have a parallel run of the old and new systems and commuters can choose to use the new or old system. Then in November hopefully we will be on the new AFC system,” he said.

Installed by a joint venture Malaysian-Spanish company INDRA-IRIS AFC Consortium (IIAC), the new system comprises new automatic gates, ticket-vending machines, passenger service machines, mobile validators, station computer system, central computer system initialisation machines and personalisation machines.

Shahril said the current system was obsolete and Prasarana was finding it difficult to get spare parts.

“We cannot install new gates in view of the rising number in commuters. The current system also cannot support an intergrated ticketing system and more importantly it could not support the current ridership,” said Shahril.

He added that the current ridership for all three rail services was 400,000 daily.

“We aim to push an average of half a million passengers daily next year. We also aim to incorporate the new system with KTM Kommuter in the near future,” added Shahril.

~News courtesy of The Star~