KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 17): State-owned public transportation operator Prasarana Malaysia Bhd saw a 24% increase in the average daily number of passengers using Prasarana services last year, beating its target of 20% growth for the year, according to Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook.
It recorded an average 1.18 million daily passengers, comprising Rapid bus and rail services ridership, last year, compared with 954,648 daily passengers in 2023.
Loke deemed the total ridership in 2024 a “healthy sign”, as the figure was almost back to pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels of 1.24 million daily passengers.
For 2025, Prasarana is targeting a nearly 20% increase in rail and bus ridership to an average of 1.4 million daily passengers.
This year's daily ridership will partly be driven by 310 new diesel buses to be delivered in phases starting from late March, as well as its vans under the demand responsive transit (DRT) service in the Klang Valley, which will be increased to 320 units (from 20 units currently) starting next month, Loke told reporters during Prasarana's 2024 performance report presentation here on Friday.
“We are hoping by increasing the number of buses and vans, we can encourage more people to use public transport to the MRT and LRT stations, solving the last-mile problem,” he added.
The average daily number of passengers will also be boosted by the opening of the first 20 stations of the Light Rail Transit Line 3 (LRT3) in Shah Alam, Selangor, by Sept 30. Meanwhile, the remaining five stations of the LRT3 will be opened by Dec 31, 2028.
“The total number of disruptions [for the trains] in 2024 was 71, marking a 40% reduction from 118 disruptions in 2023,” he added.
According to Prasarana's presentation deck, its rain reliability has improved with its mean kilometre between failures (MKBF) for four train lines (Kelana Jaya, Kajang, Putrajaya, and Monorail) — except for the Ampang line — achieving all the targets to reduce disruptions.
MKBF is the measure used for transport disruptions. For bus services, MKBF also increased by 25%, from 10,447km to 13,039km, surpassing the 2024 target by 19%.