KUALA LUMPUR, July 25 — Rail operator Prasarana Malaysia Berhad is working closely with its partners to increase the number of parking bays along its Light Rail Transit (LRT) network.

Azhar Ghazali, the head of Prasarana’s media affairs, noted the national target was to boost the percentage of commuters using public transport as their main mode of transport from the current 21 per cent to 40 per cent by 2030.

"We need to continually convince members of the public to switch to public transport. Either they leave their cars at home or drive to the nearest park and ride facility and use our LRT or the KTM Komuter,” he told Malay Mail Online in an email response.

The new parking bays provided by Prasarana along the recently-extended Sri Petaling and Kelana Jaya LRT lines are 2,200 and 2,036 respectively with charges of RM4 per entry after the first month of operations, Azhar said.

Seven new stations along the Sri Petaling LRT line come with parking bays, namely Awan Besar (184), Muhibbah (254), Kinrara BK5 (188), IOI Puchong Jaya (464), Pusat Bandar Puchong (120), Taman Perindustrian Puchong (347) and Putra Heights (452).

As for the Kelana Jaya LRT line, five of its new stations have parking lots: Ara Damansara (743), Glenmarie (558), USJ 21 (562), Alam Megah (206) and Subang Alam (109).

Not all of the 23 new stations come with these parking facilities, as there are stations where Prasarana does not have excess land to develop parking areas, he explained.

"Parking areas will need land. Prasarana can only work on the land assigned to us by the government for the development of public infrastructure facilities i.e. stations,” he said.

"But, we are working with our partners like the local authorities to develop more parking areas. The parking near Asia Jaya, for example, is developed by MBPJ.

"Prasarana is also working with property developers to develop mixed commercial areas with parking facilities within the development,” he added.

Azhar also said that Prasarana hopes that "more people will leave their private cars at home and use the feeder bus services” provided by the company to connect commuters to LRT stations.

Currently, Prasarana has feeder bus services with 30 buses to connect 12 new Kelana Jaya LRT stations to other destinations, with those with a 10-minute frequency subject to traffic conditions including Lembah Subang-Ara Damansara using the realigned and shortened T782 route.

The wait-time for buses on six new routes is also 10 minutes, namely USJ 7 and Taipan to Subang Mewah (T776), Taipan to Taipan/USJ 13, USJ 17 and USJ 18 (T777), USJ 21 to One City USJ 23 (T778), Alam Megah-Proton Seksyen 26 (T757), Subang Alam-Taman Alam Megah (T758) and Putra Heights-Bukit Lancong (T759).

The given frequency of 15 minutes is for feeder bus services for the two new routes of Ara Damansara-Subang Sky Park (T773) and Glenmarie-Stadium Shah Alam (T774), as well as the realigned T770 route linking the Subang Jaya and SS15 LRT stations to Sunway Pyramid.

As for the Sri Petaling LRT line where 10 buses are deployed, five of the feeder bus routes have a wait-time of 10 minutes, namely Pusat Bandar Puchong-Taman Wawasan (T600), Taman Perindustrian Puchong-Taman Sri Puchong (T604), Puchong Perdana and Puchong Prima to Puchong Utama (T601), Puchong Prima-Taman Mas Sepang (T603) and Putra Heights-Saujana Putra (T762).

Prasarana said the Bandar Puteri-Puchong Hartamas route of T605 has an interval of 30 to 40 minutes.

However, the daily ridership numbers for these feeder bus services were unavailable at the time of writing.

The reach of Klang Valley’s LRT services was extended in stages beginning last October, with 12 and 11 new stations added to the existing 24 and 17 stations along the Kelana Jaya and Sri Petaling LRT line by June 30. The interchange for the Sri Petaling LRT line and Ampang LRT line is through another additional station.

Prasarana is projecting an additional 300,000 passengers per day with its extension of the Sri Petaling and Kelana Jaya line, on top of the existing 420,000 riders for these two lines before they were extended and for the Ampang LRT line.

Last weekend, Prasarana group communications and strategic marketing head Lim Jin Aun was quoted as saying that the extended LRT lines have to date contributed an additional 23,000 in daily ridership numbers.