Mass Rapid Transit Corp Sdn Bhd believes that the global economic downturn will not affect Klang Valley’s second mass rapid transit line.
At 52.5km, the second MRT line connects Sg Buloh, Serdang and Putrajaya. It is slated for a groundbreaking ceremony on 29 August, with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak officiating the event.
“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 MRT Corp director for strategic communications and stakeholder relations Datuk Najmuddin Abdullah.
Notably, up to 81 percent of the land for the Sg Buloh-Serdang-Putrajaya line is owned by the government while 19 percent will be via mutual agreement or acquisition.
Najmuddin explained that the exact investment into the project is not known yet since the company is still in the process of giving out contracts for the second line.
“We will be able to gauge the cost in a few months,” he said. “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.”
Previous reports estimate the cost to stand at around RM28 billion.
As at May 2016, MRT Corp has awarded nearly RM18 billion worth of contracts under MRT Line 2 compared with the first line’s RM23 billion total investment.
“We have formerly put in our contracts that any changes in prices of raw materials should not inflate the total cost,” he stated, adding that the second line is set to be operational by mid-2022.
On the first MRT line, Najmuddin revealed that while train-on-track testings will start on 1 October, some tests have already been done 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 noted that the first phase of MRT Line 1 from Sg Buloh to Semantan is expected to be operational by December this year, while an end-to-end trip from Sg Buloh to Kajang will be ready by July 2017.
“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.”
When asked about MRT Corp’s transport-oriented developments, Najmuddin shared that the company has not commenced any of these since it “prefers 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.”
Once operational, the Sg Buloh-Kajang line will hopefully help boost the property market, which is currently taking a breather.
Mangalesri Chandrasekaran, Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact her about this or other stories email mangales@propertyguru.com.my
