The KL Monorail four-car train sets, which have been grounded since May for further enhancement of their safety features, will be returning to service soon, according to operator Rapid Rail.
In a statement issued today, Rapid Rail CEO Datuk Zohari Sulaiman said that the five four-car monorail train sets would be injected into service in stages by the end of this year.
“Works to further enhance the safety features of the trains are on-going. We are working hard to have the works completed as soon as possible; but strictly according to the work details that we had highlighted to them,” Zohari said
“As the operator of the KL Monorail Line, Rapid Rail would like to express our sincere apology to our customers for the inconvenience caused by the absence of the four-car train sets. We have no choice, but to ground them temporarily in the interest of public safety,” he added.
In the absence of the four-car train sets, Rapid Rail has been deploying shuttle buses throughout the alignment to complement the operations of the two-car trains. “We now have six sets of two-car trains in operations,” Zohari said, adding that train frequency will be on average between eight and 15 minutes, depending on the service hours and availability of trains.
Back in June, Rapid Rail decided that the four-car train sets posed safety risks. “We have no choice but to ground the four-car train sets on safety reasons; after having identified a few areas of safety risks posed by the train sets that had been handed over to us by our supplier, Scomi,” Zohari said then.
“The current challenges that they are currently facing are unprecedented as we had never expected for the four-car trains to be grounded and providing services purely using six set of two-car trains. In fact, if we truly go back to our actual KL Monorail Fleet Expansion Project (KLMFEP), we should be having 12 new four-car trains already in service. But, until today, we are still waiting for six more four-car trains to be delivered to us,” he explained.
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Obviously the supply contract has been given to the wrong company and this is not new in boleh land. Taking the monorail is a nightmare during the peak hours, and most of the foreign visitors are taking this route as compared to the LRT or MRT, what a shame!
World class projek, tp maintenance koyak..
Maintenance koyak means their technical people incompetent or their bean counters undercharge fares leading to insufficient maintenance funds or rolling stock are low quality in the first place or all of the above. Bottom line is, we don’t have maintenance culture.
In my jabatan, its normal super inflated invois & contracter use cheap low quality parts. But my boss so hepi^^
We will be more HAPPY if U report to MACC.
Theres no wrong or right company, the monorail tech is Scomis own including whole system & trainsets. So naturally, RapidKL will go to Scomi 1st, since they still exist unlike Ampang LRT train supplier company that went bankrupt. However they tried to tipu RapidKL with substandard materials & design flaws that can endanger riders. Deswai the legal ding-dong happen.
So kudos to RapidKL for sticking to its guns until Scomi can provide satisfactory trainsets.
Foreign visitors are fare paying passengers too & they are taking this route because it past by the major business district including chow kit area