Six additional ETS services for Chinese New Year, school holidays

PUTRAJAYA: Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad (KTMB) is providing six additional electric train services (ETS) daily starting Feb 7 in conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration and the school holidays.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke said it involves four additional ETS services daily for the KL Sentral-Ipoh-KL Sentral route from Feb 7 to Feb 13, and an additional two ETS daily for the KL Sentral-Padang Besar-KL Sentral route from Feb 7 to March 10,.

He said two of the four additional KL Sentral-Ipoh-KL Sentral services are express trains with stops at only three stations, namely KL Sentral, Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh and will only take two hours compared to the normal journey of two hours and 40 minutes.

"The total additional tickets offered during the Chinese New Year and school holidays are 29,526 tickets. For the 32 existing ETS services, the total number of tickets offered is 10,180 daily, " he said, adding that the sale of the additional tickets will start next Monday (Jan 15).

He told a press conference after delivering his New Year Mandate at the Transport Ministry here on Friday (Jan 12), Loke said the Land Public Transport Agency (APAD) will open applications for Temporary Change of Licence (LPS) for the occasion from Jan 15 to Feb 2 to accommodate the high demand for buses.

"This will allow other categories of buses such as additional express buses to offer their services to bring passengers back to the village in conjunction with the Chinese New Year season if they meet the conditions," he said stating that the validity period of the LPS is from Feb 7 to 18.

"APAD has issued a reminder letter to all bus terminals operators to add the number of staff and ticket counters to manage the increase in passengers.

"The use of tickets with QR codes is encouraged so that there is no need to go to the counter," he said.

Meanwhile, Loke said Batik Air Malaysia (Batik Air) has agreed to provide additional flights for the Kuala Lumpur to Sibu route on Feb 6 and 7 with a fixed fare of RM399 for economy class in conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration.

He said all the economy flight tickets from Kuala Lumpur to Sibu for the three days before Chinese New Year were sold out and the only tickets left were for business class.

"Following this, I have requested Batik Air's cooperation to support the Transport Ministry's efforts to increase flight capacity from Kuala Lumpur to Sibu," he said, adding that the ticket sale for the three additional flights on Feb 6 and three others on Feb 7 is immediate. - Bernama