KUALA LUMPUR: In an effort to demonstrate its openness towards change and excellence, Prasarana Malaysia Bhd, operator of the Klang Valley's network of commuter rail and buses, is now sharing its performance indicators with the public.
Previously, only the Transport Ministry would receive weekly updates from Prasarana on key areas of its rail and bus services.
Now, commuters can track Prasarana's progress as it aspires to achieve a global indicator for rail service reliability called Mean Kilometres Between Failures (MKBF), an established international benchmark to show how well a rail network is run.
Any incident that causes a disruption of five minutes or more will be logged.
The MKBF of the country's most well-used metro line, the Kelana Jaya LRT, is a mere 150,000, due to the many disruptions experienced over the past year.
The Transport Ministry now wants Prasarana to improve the Kelana Jaya line MKBF to at least 1,000,000 by the third quarter of 2026.
A MKBF of 1,000,000 translates to about five to six incidents in a year, said Prasarana.
"This initiative will immediately improve the transparency of Prasarana's operations. It will also improve its rail and bus services because areas for improvement will be identified and measures will be implemented to address them, in the company's aim to meet its MKBF target of 1,000,000 by Q3 2026. The benefit will be passed on to the public in the form of constantly improving service reliability and consistency," said Transport Minister Anthony Loke at Prasarana's Hari Raya open house here Monday (May 15),
Also present at the event were Prasarana chairman Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim and Prasarana president and group CEO Mohd Azharuddin Mat Sah.
Last month, Loke agreed for Prasarana to release its MKBF report every month to the public.
"Our customers deserve the best possible service, and we are committed to delivering it to them. The MKBF initiative is just one example of how Prasarana is working to improve it," said Azharuddin.
Currently, Prasarana's MKBF target of 1,000,000 applies to the Kelana Jaya LRT, the Ampang LRT and the Kajang MRT. The KL Monorail will be given a target of 150,000 as it is only several kilometres in length.
In 2022, Prasarana recorded a MKBF of between 151,000 to 178,000 for the three lines mentioned above, while the KL Monorail achieved only 84,000.
This means the Kelana Jaya LRT needs to be at least six times more reliable than it is now.
No MKBF target has been set for the Putrajaya MRT as the line is still new and data of its initial performance is still being gathered, said Azharuddin.
Loke said the 1,000,000 MKBF target is comparable every other reputable rail operator around the world, such as Singapore's SMRT.
The latest MKBF information will be released on the 20th of each month, while updates on ridership, load factor, service reliability, service availability and station facilities of its rail and bus services under Rapid Rail and Rapid Bus, will be shared every 5pm Wednesday at myrapid.com.my/rapid-rail-performance.
For an example of world-class performance reporting, see Hong Kong MTR's periodic report here: https://www.mtr.com.hk/archive/ch/pdf/2023-Q1-MTR-Service-Newsletter.pdf
