BY THEAN LEE CHENG ZUNAIRA SAIEED
PETALING JAYA: Klang Valley’s second mass rapid transit line, with a groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for Aug 26, will not be impacted in the event of a global economic downturn, said Mass Rapid Transit Corp Sdn Bhd director for strategic communications and stakeholder relations Datuk Najmuddin Abdullah.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak is scheduled to officiate the ceremony. The second MRT line, at 52.5km, links Sg Buloh, Serdang and Putrajaya.
“After the groundbreaking ceremony, we will be seeing the big movement of machinery. For now, we have started transferring civil engineers from the first line to the second line in order to be ready for the project,” said Najmuddin.
He said up to 81% of the land for MRT Line 2 involves government land while 19% will be via acquisition or through mutual agreement.
Najmuddin said the exact total investment is not known yet as the company is in the midst of giving out contracts for the Sg Buloh-Serdang-Putrajaya line.
“We will be able to gauge the cost in a few months.
“The cost of the first MRT line was calculated seven to eight years before work on it actually started so the cost will be higher with the second line,” he said. Previous press reports estimate it at about RM28bil.
As of May 2016, almost RM18bil worth of contracts have been awarded under MRT Line 2 compared with the total investment of RM23bil for the first 51km line.
“We have formerly put in our contracts that any changes in prices of raw materials should not inflate the total cost,” he said. The second line is expected to be operational by the middle of 2022.
As for the first MRT line between Sg Buloh and Kajang, Najmuddin said train-on-track testing begins on Oct 1 although some tests have already been carried out on an informal basis.
“This has brought about much excitement, not only within the company but also among the public. We have been seeing pictures of the train on test runs on the social media,” he said.
Najmuddin said on average about eight million cars going enter the city daily. The completion of the first MRT line will transport 450,000 in a day. This will take quite a number of cars off the roads, he said.
Najmuddin said the first phase of MRT Line 1 from Sg Buloh to Semantan will be operational by December this year. An end-to-end trip from Sg Buloh to Kajang will be ready for the public by July next year.
“We are well on schedule. We need 18 train sets for Sg Buloh-Semantan phase but we already have 24 sets. The entire end-to-end will need a total 58 train sets.
The trains are being fitted out in Rasah, Negeri Sembilan with four cars accommodating 1,200 compared with 950 in a four-car LRT system, he said.
On the company’s transport-oriented developments, Najmuddin said the company has not started any of these as “we prefer to focus on getting MRT Line 1 ready for operations and get the second line off the ground as we would like to see some continuity in terms of the personnel involved,” he said.
He added that once Sg Buloh-Kajang line is operational, this will hopefully help to lift the property market which is taking a bit of a breather at the moment.
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