Photo: LOW BOON TAT/The Star
PETALING JAYA: LRT commuters were left frustrated on Wednesday (Nov 9) morning as the Kelana Jaya LRT Line disruptions derailed their commute to work.
RapidKL announced on Wednesday that 16 stations on the Kelana Jaya LRT line would be shut for seven days from Wednesday (Nov 9) to next Tuesday (Nov 15) after being hit by temporary service interruptions on Saturday (Nov 5) and Monday (Nov 7).
The suspension is from the Kelana Jaya LRT Station to the Ampang Park LRT Station.
This means that trains could only run between Gombak and Damai at the northern end of the line, and from Ara Damansara to Putra Heights on the southern end of the line that has 37 stations.
Content strategist Ryan Habibullah, 34, said despite feeder bus services being provided, he still ended up walking 4km to work from the Masjid Jamek LRT station to KL Sentral.
He had taken the train from Setiawangsa LRT to Damai LRT, where he then jumped on a feeder bus that was supposed to take him to KL Sentral, where he works.
"First of all, there aren't enough buses for the amount of people affected. The buses also did not stop at all the places they promised.
"It says that the bus is supposed to stop at every station from Damai to Masjid Jamek but it didn't. It went straight from Damai to KLCC then Masjid Jamek so I had to walk to KL Sentral," said Ryan, who added that due to the morning rush hour, the bus took 40 minutes just to travel from Damai to Ampang Park, which is a station away.
He described the alternatives that commuters had to resort to as unreasonable as traffic congestion meant that taking buses or cars would cause them to be severely delayed to get to their workplaces.
E-hailing services are also four times the usual price, he added.
Meanwhile, commuters also took to Twitter to share their frustration, where the number one trending topic in Malaysia is RapidKL.
@_a_akira_ren wrote, "LRT is closed. The Bus is inefficient. Grab as a solution contributes to heavy traffic, severe pollution and stress."
@izzulfaris78 tweeted that if the disruptions continue, RapidKL needs to make all its LRT fares free of charge for a month.
"People have used up so much time/money/energy just to go home. Do you expect people to just be okay with you shutting down the heart of KL?" he asked in his tweet.
Meanwhile, @zatul_cikmo expected that she would be arriving late at work from Nov 9 to 15 due to the LRT suspension.
"The bus is also late, taxi means hours of waiting, while e-hailing is charging cutthroat prices."
User @AinulNunanaa prayed for God to ease the travel of all commuters who had to find other alternatives to go to work as the LRT has been suspended for a week.
"The Kelana Jaya-Ampang Park link is the busiest one as there are many offices and apartments along the route."
