PUTRAJAYA: After several postponements, the long-awaited monorail system in Kuala Lumpur will start its operations on Aug 31, which coincides with the National Day celebration.
He said that the system would start commercial operations on its entire line from that day.
However, he did not provide any further details including the quantum of the fare.
The monorail has 11 stations in the city and is expected to run at five-minute intervals during peak hours and 10- minute intervals during non-peak periods.
It will run along an elevated 8.6km track from Jalan Tun Razak, near the Tun Razak bus terminal, to Jalan Tun Sambanthan in Brickfields with its routes passing along Kuala Lumpur’s busiest roads such as Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Sultan Ismail and Jalan Imbi.
Operations of the monorail were postponed several times after an incident where the safety wheel of a train that was on a trial run fell off, struck and seriously injured journalist David Chelliah on his head in August last year.
After the incident, the Transport Ministry and the Railways Department imposed more stringent safety measures on the system.
The monorail completes the city’s overall transport network because it is designed to interface with Star-LRT at Titiwangsa and Hang Tuah, and Putra-LRT at Bukit Nanas and KL Sentral.
Earlier, Chan witnessed the signing of a cooperation agreement between MTrans Middle East Sdn Bhd and Siemens Ag at his office yesterday.
MTrans Middle East and Siemens will jointly bid for a US$1.2bil (RM4.56bil) monorail project in Dubai.
On the bid, MTrans Middle East director Datuk Syed Hussein Al Habshee, who is also the former Malaysian Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, said that the possibilityof the company securing the project was very bright because of the long-standing government-to-government relationship between the two countries.
MTrans Middle East is a 70% owned subsidiary of MTrans Holdings Sdn Bhd which has its main business in monorail and bus manufacturing, infrastructure construction, and project management.
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