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| A sneak preview of Malaysia's new Monorail train by PRASARANA |
As at 3pm today, with just another 13 more hours to go, the RapidKL Monorail Fleet Expansion Project (RKLFEP) and its contractors from the Portugal-based Thales are now working towards continued smooth process until completion of the exercise.
When planned, the trial operations took into consideration the possibility of hiccups in the exercise, putting into place a 52-hour non-stop continuous trial tests.
“There were actually some minor teething problems at the start of yesterday’s trial ops. They were, however, quite minor and our engineers managed to overcome them swiftly. We are very happy with the progress of the tests and hope that the trend will continue until the conclusion of the operations,” says RKLFEP project manager, Encik Muhammad Isom Azis, who is also the Executive Vice President for Rolling Stock of Prasarana Integrated Management and Engineering Service Sdn Bhd (PRIME).
PRIME is a subsidiary of Prasarana or Syarikat Prasarana Negara Berhad, in full, which is the asset owners of RapidKL monorail and bus services as well the bus services of Rapid Penang and Rapid Kuantan.
The 52-hour trial operation commenced at the stroke of midnight yesterday with a continuous 14-hour test of the main line normal operations with 10 two-car trains before proceeding the second phase on degraded mode for 12 hours and then, moving into another 9-hour continuous test in normal and degraded mode for the monorail depots.
“For Phase 2 on degraded mode for the MainLine, we managed to complete the tests four hours ahead of schedule. For Phase 3 on normal and degraded modes at the depots, we managed to complete them five hours ahead of schedule.
“Indeed, we are very satisfied with the results and the running of the tests. I would like to thank all parties involved in the exercise.
“We have also received commendable response on the shuttle bus services. On that note, I would like to thank our colleagues from Rapid Bus Sdn Bhd especially the drivers and the traffic controllers. We hope they continue their good work today,” Isom added.
More than 9,000 commuters took the special bus shuttle service yesterday with Route 1 between KL Sentral and Titiwangsa recording the highest ridership with more than 6,000 passengers.
Like the RapidKL Monorail Line trial operations, the services encountered teething problem at start but was immediately stabilized with close cooperation between the bus traffic controllers and RapidKL monorail customer service staff and officials from Prasarana’s Group Communications and Strategic Marketing Services.
The trial operations is scheduled to be completed at 4am tomorrow morning with RapidKL Monorail Line resuming normal services two hours later at 6am.
Results of the tests would be immediately submitted to Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD) for approval and certification for the new signalling system.
Upon approval of SPAD, RapidKL Monorail Line would then the new Automatic Train Control (ATC) Thales system, which is widely used by leading train operators in Europe and Asia.
That would then allow injection of the new four-car trains into service, which is scheduled to start with the first pair in the third quarter of this year.
For details, kindly contact Prasarana Senior Vice-President Communications and Media Affairs, Azhar Ghazali at 019-3837865 or Haliza Hamid at 019-2210058. T
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