The Train We Ride: A Working Commuter’s Case for Better LRT

By Dr. Rabieahtul Abu Bakar

A week on the LRT

Last week I attended a certified training course at Mid-Valley. I live in Ampang, so I took the LRT. On my first day, my 18-year-old son volunteered to drive me there and fetch me home, so that I would learn the route. Being taught my own commute by my teenager was humbling, and I recommend it to every parent.

After that first day I rode on my own, and the ride set me thinking. Every morning and evening, a great many working men and women do exactly this, and they have done it for years. They hold the city up, yet they are rarely asked how the journey feels.

So this piece is about the train we ride. It asks how crowded it is, how it was built and kept, what the numbers say, how Singapore, Japan and the Netherlands manage, and what hardworking people in Kuala Lumpur deserve.

Overcrowding: when “full” is not the limit

The Kelana Jaya line ran at a load factor of 109 percent in April 2026, according to Rapid Rail’s own briefing (The Star, 21 May 2026). Arithmetic says nothing can be more than 100 percent full. Our train, it seems, did not read the textbook.

The same briefing said the line’s passenger numbers grew by more than 100 percent between 2020 and 2026, on a line of 37 stations and 74 trains. On 31 December 2025 the line carried 321,381 passengers in a day (The Sun). Across all Prasarana services, 2025 averaged 1.31 million passengers a day, 11 percent more than 2024 (The Star, 7 Jan 2026).

The crowding is not only a statistic. In October 2026, Rapid KL put crowd control at six Kelana Jaya stations after commuters reported packed platforms and waits of up to seven minutes (NST, 8 Oct 2026). On 31 October the Transport Minister told Prasarana to speed up train maintenance so that more trains could run (The Vibes). Rapid KL has, to be fair, disputed some media reports of crowding, saying that withdrawing trains for checks is standard procedure.

The numbers: LRT ridership since 1996

Annual LRT ridership in Kuala Lumpur more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, from about 73 million passenger trips to about 160 million, or roughly 4 percent growth a year. The Star line (now the Ampang and Sri Petaling lines) opened on 16 December 1996. The Putra line (now the Kelana Jaya line) opened on 1 September 1998 and was completed in 1999. The table starts in 2000, the first year of an official series I could open.

Year	Kelana Jaya line (million trips)	Ampang & Sri Petaling lines (million trips)	Both lines (million trips)	Average per day, both lines (thousand)
2000	44.52	28.43	72.94	200
2001	52.48	32.41	84.89	233
2002	54.42	33.47	87.89	241
2003	56.58	39.08	95.66	262
2004	57.73	43.35	101.08	277
2005	60.48	45.83	106.30	291
2006	56.75	49.89	106.64	292
2007	56.01	53.35	109.36	300
2008	58.17	51.01	109.17	299
2009	55.58	49.38	104.96	288
2010	58.04	51.57	109.61	300
2011	68.40	53.57	121.97	334
2012	71.57	56.81	128.38	352
2013	78.70	60.21	138.91	381
2014	81.97	63.27	145.24	398
2015	82.14	62.81	144.95	397
2016	79.00	59.19	138.20	379
2017	83.59	59.46	143.05	392
2018	87.22	60.96	148.18	406
2019	94.66	65.15	159.81	438
2025	89.63	not found	not found	not found

Sources: 2000–2008 from the Department of Statistics Malaysia table on the Economic Planning Unit site; 2009–2018 from the Ministry of Transport’s Transport Statistics Malaysia 2018; 2019 and 2025 from the Kelana Jaya line and Ampang and Sri Petaling lines pages, which cite the Ministry’s 2019 rail statistics. The daily column is the annual total divided by 365.

Three things stand out.

1. Growth was steady until 2019, with dips in 2009 and 2016.
2. The Kelana Jaya line carried 89.63 million trips in 2025, still about 5 percent below its 2019 total of 94.66 million. Yet its daily average reached 289,297 in the second quarter of 2026, about 12 percent above the 2019 average of roughly 259,000. Riders appear to be arriving faster than the trains that carry them.
3. The gaps are real. I could not find an official year-by-year series for 1996 to 1999 or for 2020 to 2024, nor the 2025 total for the Ampang and Sri Petaling lines. The Ministry of Transport’s rail statistics and the government’s data portal, data.gov.my, are where to request them.

Built to last, kept up cheaply

A railway is a promise of decades, and the promise is kept in the maintenance budget, not at the ribbon-cutting. The Kelana Jaya line shows what happens when a promise ages quietly.

Its original train control system has run since 1998. Prasarana is now spending RM150 million on a mid-life upgrade, replacing hardware “no longer supported by the manufacturer” (NST, 28 July 2025). The original fleet is nearing 30 years of service, and the Rapid Rail operator says it now inspects the trains far more often than before (Business Today, 20 May 2026). The Transport Minister told Parliament in March 2026 that ageing trains were behind the disruptions (paultan.org).

The cure is on order. Budget 2026 set aside RM1 billion for 26 new Kelana Jaya trains (Bernama). The minister first said they would arrive by 2028. In May, Rapid Rail said the first would come in 2029, with all 26 running by 2031 (NST, 20 May 2026). Commuters must therefore ride the old fleet for several more years.

Track matters too. On 28 May 2026 an Ampang line train derailed at a track switch near Chan Sow Lin station. All 25 passengers got out safely (Bernama). Afterwards, the Technological Association Malaysia urged operators to move to predictive maintenance, which means fixing parts by their condition before they fail, not after (The Star, 29 May 2026).

The lesson is old and plain. A train that is cheap to build but starved of upkeep is the costliest train of all.

The mindset behind the tracks

Our rail planning has too often answered yesterday’s question. The first LRT lines opened with lower ridership than expected, and their private operators could not repay their loans. The Putra line’s company was wound up by the High Court on 26 April 2002, and Prasarana took over the lines (Rapid KL; Kelana Jaya line). Two decades later the problem is the opposite: too many riders for the trains we have.

The Shah Alam LRT line shows how hard the balance is. Its approved cost rose from RM9 billion in 2015 to RM31.65 billion on the Ministry of Finance’s 2018 reckoning. The Cabinet then cut it to RM16.63 billion by ordering 22 three-car trains instead of 42 six-car trains, among other savings (Ministry of Finance, 12 July 2018). Five stations were later restored, taking the final cost to RM21.93 billion (paultan.org).

Supporters say the savings were real and that the trains match forecast demand. The Deputy Transport Minister said in June 2026 that the cut will not cause overcrowding, and seven more train sets are planned (NST, 29 June 2026). Critics warn that shorter trains and fewer parking bays will cost commuters for years (Malaysiakini letter). The Kelana Jaya line is the reminder: forecasts are guesses, and crowds do not read them.

The habit of reaction shows in how crises end. After three peak-hour breakdowns in February 2026, the Transport Minister ordered an explanation from Prasarana (The Sun). After the May derailment he said serious action must be taken (The Vibes). Accountability is welcome. Better still is a system that needs fewer rescues.

Reality on the ground

The trains were more reliable in 2025 than in 2024, and ridership rose, but 2026 has tested the gains. Prasarana reported the following for the year (The Star; NST; Newswav).

Measure	2024	2025
Rail service disruptions, all lines	71	31
Kelana Jaya line disruptions	26	16
Distance per rail breakdown (km)	70,000	790,000
Average Prasarana riders per day (million)	1.18	1.31

Then came February 2026. Three peak-hour breakdowns hit the Kelana Jaya line within days, and by 26 February The Sun was reporting a fourth disruption that month (The Sun). Rapid Rail has said some faults came from “temporary instability” during the signalling upgrade, which runs on through 2026 (NST, 20 May 2026).

Behind every number is a person with a lanyard, a bag and a deadline: a nurse on a shift, a clerk, a technician, a mother with a school pick-up at five. Late trains cost them wages, patience and time with family. I found no official breakdown of LRT riders by sex, income or occupation, and that is a gap worth closing. A service cannot serve people it has not counted.

Meanwhile, the national goal is a 40 percent public transport share by 2030. The Thirteenth Malaysia Plan puts today’s Klang Valley figure at 25.9 percent (Bernama, 31 July 2025), while the Transport Minister has cited about 20 percent for the country (Carz). The My50 unlimited travel pass has helped, with 556,618 digital passes bought from July to December 2025 (The Star).

How others do it: Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands

The three countries do not run perfect railways. What they have are better habits: they measure, they publish, and they admit their problems early.

System	Scale	Reliability	Strength	Own struggle
Kuala Lumpur (Prasarana rail)	1.31 million riders a day across all Prasarana services (2025)	One breakdown per 790,000 km; 31 disruptions in 2025	Record ridership and the My50 pass	Load factor of 109 percent on the Kelana Jaya line (April 2026)
Singapore MRT	3.49 million riders a day, opened 1987 (2025)	A delay over five minutes once per 2.37 million train-km (Aug 2025 to Jul 2026)	Public target of 1 million train-km set in 2017, met by 2019, now reported monthly	Reliability fell to its lowest since 2020 in 2024–25; a Rail Reliability Taskforce followed in September 2025
Japan (JR East and Tokyo)	JR East alone: 17.1 million passengers a day on 12,773 trains (2014)	Tokaido Shinkansen: average delay of 1.4 minutes per train (FY2024)	Strict timetables, platform doors, disciplined queuing	In 2016, 29 of 45 Tokyo lines had morning rush-hour delays on at least 10 of 20 working days
Netherlands (NS)	0.96 million trips per working day (2022)	90.6 percent of journeys within five minutes of schedule (2025)	92.3 percent of peak passengers find a seat; about 40 percent reach the station by bicycle	Disruptions reached about 6,000 in 2025, triple the 2011 level; track condition worries

Sources: LTA, Jul 2025 to Jun 2026; Tabla; LTA on the 2017 target; Business Today; Singapore MOT; MRT ridership; NST on Japan; Railway Technology; Japan Government Online on JR East; Railway Supply on NS; IamExpat; Danish Parliament transport committee papers on NS; NL Times. The figures use different definitions, so read them as pointers, not a league table.

Three lessons stand out.

1. Singapore: set a number, then publish it. Singapore’s transport minister set a target in 2017, met it in 2019 and has stayed above it. When reliability slipped, it published the figures monthly and formed a taskforce.
2. Japan: crowding is itself a cause of delay. Tokyo’s transport ministry found that most short delays came from passengers, mainly those trying to board after departure time. Platform doors and off-peak commuting campaigns are its answers.
3. The Netherlands: the bicycle is a feeder line. With about 40 percent of rail passengers arriving by bike, the train needs fewer buses and car parks, and its promise is simple: a seat for nearly everyone.

What holds Kuala Lumpur back

Our biggest problem is not one broken train but a thin network around it. The government’s own papers name the main challenges.

• Too little track. In 2024 the Economy Ministry said the Klang Valley has 7.9 metres of rail per square kilometre, against 67.5 in the United Kingdom and 352 in Singapore. Only 55 percent of the valley had rail or bus cover, and bus numbers stood at 0.21 per 1,000 people (NST, 2024).
• The first and last mile. The Twelfth Malaysia Plan named poor links between homes and stations as a key reason people drive (The Star, 2021). Demand-responsive vans now serve over 33 zones in the valley, with about 300 vans in 2025 (Bernama, 2025). It is a start, not a finish.
• Cheap cars. The same plan observed that low car ownership costs make people reluctant to switch to trains.
• Split responsibility. The plan also noted weak coordination between federal and state governments on public transport planning and development.
• Stitched-together systems. The lines were built by different owners at different times, and many did not connect well, so changing trains can still be a chore (Klang Valley Integrated Transit System).

The Thirteenth Malaysia Plan promises better stations, more frequent buses and special rail tariffs to cut operating costs. Plans are cheap. Delivery is the part that carries the passengers.

What commuters deserve

Working people deserve a train that arrives, has room to breathe in, and is built to be kept. Seven steps would get us there.

1. Publish a monthly report card for every line. Singapore reports its reliability monthly against a public target (LTA). Prasarana already reports yearly; monthly would let riders see trouble before it becomes headlines.
2. Set a ceiling on peak crowding. A load factor of 109 percent should trigger extra trains, not an explanation. A published limit gives engineers a number to defend.
3. Budget for upkeep on day one. Every new line should carry a funded plan for signalling renewal, mid-life refurbishment and condition-based maintenance, as the Technological Association Malaysia urged.
4. Plan for the crowd of tomorrow. Build platforms, depots and power for longer trains even if the first order is short. The Shah Alam line’s stations were built for four-car trains, which is a good example.
5. Mend the first and last mile. Shaded walkways, safe crossings, bicycle parking and feeder buses cost less than a new line and fill the trains already running. The Dutch bring about 40 percent of rail passengers to the station by bicycle.
6. Pay back lost time. NS, the Dutch operator, refunded 3.6 million euros to passengers for delays, according to its end-of-2025 report (NL Times). A delay refund for pass holders would make punctuality someone’s problem.
7. Stagger the working day. Tokyo runs off-peak commuting campaigns with employers (Railway Technology). The government and big firms could lead with flexible start times, which costs little and thins the peak.

None of this is glamorous. Rails, signals and walkways rarely make good ribbon-cutting photographs, which is exactly why they need a champion.

The future of hardworking people

A country is judged by how it treats its commuters at 7.30 in the morning. They are the ones who clock in, who teach, who nurse, who fix, and who go home to cook. They ask for very little: a train that comes, a platform with room to stand, and an honest word when it does not.

The record shows we can improve. Disruptions fell by more than half in 2025, new trains are on order, and Budget 2026 put money behind them. The record also shows that gains fade when upkeep is skipped and when forecasts are trimmed to fit a budget.

I took the LRT for one week, with a son to show me the way. Many Malaysians take it for a lifetime, with nobody to show them anything but the door. Let us give them a railway worthy of the ride, and a government that treats punctuality as a promise, not a pleasant surprise.

Sources and notes

Figures were gathered on 7 November 2026. Where a figure comes from a news report rather than an official table, it is a secondary source.

• Ridership 2000–2008: Department of Statistics Malaysia, via the Economic Planning Unit.
• Ridership 2009–2018: Ministry of Transport, Transport Statistics Malaysia 2018, table 2.8. For 2009, the Department of Statistics shows slightly different totals (54.96 million Kelana Jaya, 50.04 million Ampang and Sri Petaling); I used the Ministry’s.
• Ridership 2019 and 2025: Kelana Jaya line and Ampang and Sri Petaling lines, which cite the Ministry of Transport. Worth checking against the original before print.
• Not found: annual figures for 1996–1999 and 2020–2024, and the 2025 total for the Ampang and Sri Petaling lines.
• Prasarana’s 2025 results: The Star, 7 Jan 2026, NST, 7 Jan 2026.
• Kelana Jaya load factor and fleet plans: The Star, 21 May 2026, NST, 20 May 2026.
• Shah Alam line costs: Ministry of Finance media release, 12 July 2018.
• Modal share and Thirteenth Malaysia Plan: Bernama, 31 July 2025.
• Global comparison sources are listed under the table in the comparison section.

The average per day in the ridership table is a simple annual total divided by 365, so it ignores weekday and weekend differences.

Dr. Rabieahtul Abu Bakar is a Disaster Risk Reduction Consultant and geospatial engineer based in Kuala Lumpur, working for over 15 years at the intersection of science, technology, policy and resilience. She holds a PhD in Geological Hazard (Disaster Risk Reduction Management), alongside an MSc and BEng in Geomatics Engineering (Geodynamics and GNSS).