He said the government will review the way Prasarana maintains all rail-based public transport modes under its supervision as allocating more time to maintenance and engineering could help reduce the risk of breakdowns and service disruptions, Bernama reported.
“One of the components of a good maintenance culture is to allow for longer engineering hours every day. We plan to introduce it in our lines and operations,” he was quoted as saying.
“We have to look at these longer hours of engineering. It (may) mean having to close operations a bit earlier, probably by 30 minutes or one hour, so as to have longer maintenance and engineering time,” he said during Prasarana’s Hari Raya open house in Kuala Lumpur.
He promised that Prasarana would provide ample notice to commuters to adapt to the changes, if any, in its operating hours.
Prasarana is a government-owned company formed in 1998 to drive the transformation of public transport systems and services. It owns the light rail services in the Klang Valley as well as Rapid bus services in major cities.
There have been numerous disruptions to the LRT system of late, with 16 stations on the Kelana Jaya LRT line experiencing a five-day closure last December. Loke previously said these disruptions are expected to continue until the third quarter of 2023.
At the open house today, Loke said he was confident Prasarana would be able to achieve its Mean Kilometre Between Failures (MKBF) target of one million kilometres for the LRT Kelana Jaya Line, LRT Ampang Line and the MRT Kajang Line by the third quarter of 2026.
He was also confident the Monorail could also achieve its MKBF target of 150,000km by the third quarter of 2026.
MKBF is an internationally recognised method of assessing service reliability derived from the average distance a train travels before a failure or breakdown causing a delay of more than five minutes occurs.
He said the MKBF – used by train operators around the world – was also part of the main KPI (key performance indicator) and a transparent evaluation method for the MRT, LRT and Monorail services.
He said the MKBF report which Prasarana prepares every month for the ministry will also be displayed on its website and social media platforms in a bid to increase transparency.