Kampung Data Harun KTM Station

Railways and condos with so much potential

This station on the KTM line (Port Klang - Tanjung Malim) is next to Kampung Medan and a busy industrial area of PJ.  It is also opposite a school.

The population residing near the station is large and growing (as would be expected in an urban area like PJ) and there are also many workers commuting daily to workplaces nearby the station. 

The KTM line has a theoretical maximum capacity in the range 30,000 - 50,000 passengers per hour and is routed along a corridor of dense population centres including important destinations like KL Sentral.  

There are existing high rise apartments in the area, some more have recently been built, and there are more coming too.  See below for a summary of apartments / condos within 1km.

Apartment name	Number of units / floors	Distance to nearest KTM station
Dwitara Residences	1756 / 43	980m
Residensi NewUrban	922 / 36	790m
Villaria Kondominium	304 / 19	730m
Verando Residence	1055 / 35	550m
Apartment Desa Mentari 3	6239 / 18	870m
Aparment Desa Mentari 2	~3000 / 18	390m
Taman Medan Cahaya (8 blocks)	~1000 / 17	280m
TOTAL UNITS	14,276++

Marked on a map:

As a reminder, it takes around 10-12 minutes to walk 1km and 3-5 minutes to cycle it, and most of these towers are much closer than 1km.

So, what is the population of this area now?  What will it be in a decade?  It will surely be a big number.

Yet, the ridership at this station is SO LOW.  Even at peak times it doesn't get that many users.

If it's so close to all these things, why is hardly anyone using it?  Leaving aside the car-centric mindset of many Malaysians, there are two key problems:  extremely poor service from the KTM, and horrific accessibility into and around the station. 

An Access Nightmare

The station has been trapped against a giant toll plaza (completed in 2004, toll abolished for KL-bound traffic in 2009) for the NPE highway.  Predictably there is no convenient pedestrian route from the other side of the highway, so it needs to be accessed via poor quality and poorly maintained pedestrian bridges with steep stairs.

From the north side, pass the workshops, lorries and go across the longkang

Up a small ramp towards the KL-bound platform.  Watch out for the dog sh!t.

 

To cross to the other side, use the narrow uneven path with a high wall looming over you.  No covered walkway here and no lighting either.

 

Hopefully you like steps

 

Across the footbridge (no cover on the KTM part) and to cross the highway, yes, there are more steps

Down the steep steps to Kampung Medan.  A few people are parking their bikes near the steps (no official parking)

This route is the only pedestrian access across the highway in this area so it does get daily users just wishing to cross the highway.  Is this really the best Petaling Jaya can offer them?

Is it any wonder that residents in this area want something to be built - anything - even PJD Link - if this is what they have to put up with now?

Putting the Kampung in Kg Dato Harun

 

Looking a little further out, the north side entrance to the station is a bizarre obstacle course of sprawling workshops, narrow lanes, dilapidated bridges, farm animals, and oil palm trees.  If you walk to the station along this route, you may encounter dead dogs, turkeys and goats.  Seriously.   

The route from the north - pass the lorry parking and the dead dog.

 

Now pass the sleepy dog and the workshops.  Keep going.

One of the residents of Kg Dato Harun striking a pose. 

North entrance to Kampung Dato Harun station.  Is it time to quit driving and go cold turkey? 

This is incredible neglectful to the area, which is full of factories with many workers who don't drive.  The streets in the area are actually quite reasonable - with trees for shade, wide verges for walking and relatively low speed traffic.

Tree-lined streets serving the workplaces in the area

  

The south side is not much better, with its steep stairs awkwardly set on the corner of a residential street next to the highway.

 

Simple Improvements

 

It is not difficult to imagine improving the routes into the station.   With a very small budget and some common sense the pathways could be greatly improved.

• On the north side, request the workshop businesses to keep a safe walking route clear at all times. 
• Widen the walking paths, fix uneven and broken tiles and handrails, provide canopies and lighting.
• Keep the farm animals out of the path.
• Fix the steps at the end points of the pathways.

• For the south side (Kg Medan), fix up the bridges, provide lighting and signposts.  Put some bicycle and scooter parking at the foot of the bridge. 

With a bit more budget, lifts and ramps could be included to make it accessible for OKU. 

Sustainable Solutions 

However all these half-measures are not really good enough and a transformation is called for. Imagine what you could do with a tiny fraction of the budget of PJD Link:

• Roll out micromobility hubs (Beam Scooters, bikes docks/ parking)
• Study and implement a network of good quality connecting paths over a wider area
• Provide a bus drop off point from the north side
  
• Upgrade station facilities with lifts
• Add separate bridges or a wide deck for cycle, scooter and pedestrian access direct to the station and also directly across the highway. Open up the access routes and reduce car-dependency. 
• Take back the useless toll plaza, which is mainly serving a tiny group of wealthy highway concessionaires.  Turn it into a tree-lined public park to shield the neighbourhood from the highway.  (NB. The way tolls are collected might be changing which will potentially free up space at toll plazas.)
• Provide connecting routes to Seri Setia station as an alternative.

 If the toll plaza was abolished, imagine the opportunities for improvements to the area

PJD Link Demands

While access to public transport is this poor, people will be tempted to reach for the idea of adding something new (especially highways) - something that they think might help with the situation they currently have to put up with.

In this case the PJD Link is not in the same direction as the KTM line, but opening up more connectivity across the divisive NPE highway will help give people more options. The current situation is an example of how poor connectivity and accessibility begets more highways in a vicious, unstoppable cycle.

The Density Question

This case study shows that density is not a solution in itself.  Being high density doesn't somehow automatically save developments and make them good.  Density done badly is still bad.  High density needs to be paired with good planning and transport accessibility.  Imagine if Hong Kong or Tokyo were just giant condos on top of giant parking towers surrounded by mega highways.  It would be a disaster. 

Let's bring some nuance to the planning discussion so that when we do high-density we do it well. 

A Little Bit of History

For those interested in the history of the line and area, see below this rail map showing the old names of the stations. 

The station was previously known as 'MAHA' - there was apparently an expo ground here, for the Malaysia Agriculture, Horticulture and Agrotourism Show (forerunner to MAEPS).

Also there is some recent history with the toll plaza at PJS2 - there were actually protests by disgruntled residents.  Sadly, they weren't protesting that the toll plaza was blocking their access to the KTM station.  They were protesting that they had to pay the toll.  On the grounds that there was no alternative to get to KL...  The toll was duly abolished in 2009.  

 

 

The First & Last Mile

Why build metro lines?

Spending a lot of money on extensive metro systems is generally something capital cities do with good intentions.  Intentions to provide a better city for their residents, a way for them to move around freely and efficiently.  The first and most fundamental test of these metro systems is their ridership.  The intention is to to build up ridership which shows people are either using them instead of some other form of transport (e.g. cars) or are making new journeys that the system has enabled for them.

When looking at the Klang Valley, it is sometimes unclear if the people behind the public transport systems actually intended to achieve high ridership.  Perhaps it was more about telling the world that Malaysia has a first-world metro, rather than actually getting people to use it?

This question arises because the first & last mile connectivity is so poor.  It really doesn't take a transport expert to know that for a metro line to maximise its usefulness, it has to be easy to get on and off.  In the same way, everyone can see that if the internet wasn't accessible (let's say it was only available in fish farms, nowhere else had internet) then not many people would use it.  The terrible state of the first/last mile in Malaysia is mainly because of poor station placement, disjointed planning approaches, car-centric infrastructure, lack of investment in buses, and severe disregard for walking and biking. 

Making the most of it

So with extensive metro lines in place in the Klang Valley, and more lines still to come, how can their effectiveness be maximised for Klang Valley residents?

There's a breakdown of the typical choices people have for first/ last mile in the figure below (yes, a lot of words and arrows in there...) 

Jalan kaki

In many capital cities (including Singapore), by far the dominant mode for first/last mile is walking.  This is the obvious, convenient choice - after all, all journeys start with walking in some way or another (or could be wheelchair).   However, this absolutely relies on the public transport stations being well-placed near to population centres and highly accessible to a decent network of walking routes.

In much of Malaysia, we find that the walking routes are not there.  In fact, they are often physically blocked (sometimes by a highway).  So the number one priority for MRT planners, local authorities and other stakeholders is to open up walking routes to the stations.  (It seems incredible that this was not understood by the planners of the metro systems and local authorities in the first place.)

Wheels

Let's face it, not all metro stations are within walking distance of all destinations and that level of coverage is unlikely to ever be achieved.   But we have wheels.  Many types of wheels, human powered, or electric.  The bicycle (and electric scooter) are game-changing devices that are light, compact, efficient, enjoyable, and convenient. And they hugely extend the range of anyone who uses them.   In Malaysia people might be comfortable walking 600 - 800m only.  With a bicycle they can quickly cover 5 or 10 times this (and improve their fitness and health at the same time).  Cities like Paris and London have seen massive rises in the use of this micromobility since the policies and infrastructure have been in effect.  A walk around Seoul will make it clear that a lot of people are using the bicycle as a quick and convenient way to get to the metro line.

Image of bicycles at a Seoul Subway station.  These are dockable bikes but if the docking station is full, you can just park nearby.

Again, for people to choose bicycles or scooters, the right policies and infrastructure need to be there. If all the cars disappeared, then walking and cycling would become easy.  However, planners need to work a bit harder if they want a city with lots of cars but also one that works for bicycles and scooters.  There are simple low-hanging fruits that still make a big difference, like good bicycle parking (some downtown stations in KL don't even have any bike parking), availability of Beam scooters etc.  But to really shift people over to micromobility, there needs to be a proper network of safe, direct routes to stations.  

Planners could start by rating all the roads around stations - small neighborhood roads with low speeds, mid-size roads that need segregated bike lanes, or urban highways and ramps that are no-go for micro-mobility.  Then work out how to turn this into something better - including adding some dedicated routes and shortcuts just for micromobility. 

Vehicular transport

Road-based vehicles obviously have their place in transport.  In urban areas, busses are generally effective because they can transport a large number of people in a relatively small space and for low cost.  In cities, where population density is high, there are usually lots of people wanting to go the same way - let's say from an office area to an MRT station.  So busses make sense.  Private vehicles, on the other hand, are extremely inefficient in urban areas.  They require huge amounts of space when moving, AND when not in use (which is over 90% of the time). On top of this, for every person, they move around large metal components, seats, tanks of fuel or batteries, and need to be powered by high-energy sources.  Common sense therefore indicates that private vehicles are not a good first/last mile option for cities with large populations.  The parking issue also has a compounding effect, whereby the space needed for parking around stations blocks alternative uses and makes pedestrian access more difficult.  Most big capital cities have policies with very low targets for the share of first/last mile connectivity provided by private cars or taxi/Grab.

There is a 'third' option, perhaps somewhere between a bus and a Grab.  This is known as Demand Responsive Transit (DRT) and tends to be in the form of vans, as has been rolled out in PJ and other areas.  This is low-cost to the user and can be more direct than a bus.  However, it doesn't move large numbers of people and is still subject to the traffic jams, breakdowns and general delays we see on the road network.  It has its place, but it's definitely not the answer to the first/last mile.  It might even be more of a distraction or an excuse to avoid providing the real solutions - walking, micromobility, and the good old-fashioned bus.  

Rather than subsidizing DRT, perhaps it would be worth spending more on regular busses and associated infra, like bus lanes and bus stops.  Bus routeing needs to be studied too. People prefer trips with fewer changes.  For example just using one bus to get home, rather than a bus and then an MRT or MRT+LRT.  So routing busses a bit further and to more destinations will also help.  As an example, say you're in KL and you want to take a long distance train or airport train from KLSentral.  There is no metro station nearby you, but there is a feeder bus.  So you need to take the feeder bus, then wait, then take a metro line a few stops to KLSentral.  Instead of this, just route more busses direct to hub stations like KLSentral.   

Once busses reach a sufficient level of service (especially frequency) there will be a step-change in their use.  Yes, it will need a big push to reach that level of service, but it will really help drive modal shift onto busses (which ... will be good for car drivers too).

KL's bridge of sighs

There's a bridge in downtown KL, next to an MRT station, nearby a residential and amenity area, that's been under construction for around 5 years. Yes, FIVE YEARS.

One day, this bridge might connect Jalan Hang Jebat with Jalan Galloway.

If it was a highway bridge this speed of construction might be a scandal.  But, it's a pedestrian bridge, and like other pedestrian infrastructure in Malaysia, it is low down the priority list.  Even though, EVEN THOUGH, it's in a super-strategic location.

It's not just the MRT that it will connect.  Along Jalan Hang Jebat there are schools, a stadium (Chin Woo), and the second tallest building in the world.  Could be a lot of people around there, eh?

This is a bridge that crosses LRT tracks.   Not over a narrow road, like in Brickfields.  This bridge will actually be highly functional and serve an important purpose, creating pedestrian connectivity and encouraging walking in the city. 

It might sound like a small thing, one pedestrian bridge, but given its location it has the potential to make a big difference.  It can also be seen as a microcosm of what can happen to pedestrian infrastructure in Malaysia.  Will it become the next Ecocity/Midvalley bridge, that took around 20 years to be finished?

Transport Access Malaysia has been monitoring 'progress' on the bridge for a few years.  In August 2024, a follower wrote to DBKL to ask for an update.  DBKL promised that the bridge would be finished by the end of 2024.

This is the scene in January 2025:

 Little or no progress since months.

 Every month, another sigh, because it's still not open.

Why is the contractor not finishing this?  Why is it not fast-tracked?  After all, it's just a bridge crossing an LRT line - why does it need to take so long?  The construction was apparently awarded to contractor AZRB by PNB Merdeka Ventures. These are high profile companies that surely know how to finish a pedestrian bridge?  What does DBKL say about this? At least provide an update on progress and an expected opening timeline.  Is there any accountability?

It should never get to the point of asking the questions above.  The better questions to focus on are the ones during the planning stages.   KL planners, authorities, developers and the wider stakeholder community might find asking questions such as these helpful:

• What is directly around our public transport nodes?
• What are the blockers to pedestrian flow?
• What does a good timeline look like for implementing pedestrian improvements?
• Can we enhance it further with covered walkways, lighting, planting, signage, and perhaps benches or other amenities to make the city more livable?

Good answers are available to all these questions and can be the basis for big improvements in the city.  Can DBKL plan together with the relevant stakeholders to get this done (and enforce it if needed)?

MRT 3 feedback

A public display and feedback exercise is now underway for the Klang Valley's planned MRT3.

Will this circular MRT line suffer the same fate as MRT1 and MRT2, where first/last mile, station integration and accessibility were often afterthoughts?

There are some 'thrusts' and principles listed on the MRT website for the new line.

 

There is no mention of getting ridership, reducing car dependency, or improving health (e.g. reducing stress, encouraging a bit of exercise). 

Some have called Malaysia's first MRT lines vanity projects, and there may be a bit of evidence for that - certain leaders wanted KL to have a fancy, shiny, high spec metro system, but not necessarily for anyone to use it.  So it was more about the prestige of having it than the actual practicality of getting people around the city efficiently.  Let's move on from that.  If we really want people to use it, make it super convenient, easy to get into, going to places where there is lots of stuff within easy reach. 

Here is a small selection of some of the design and planning issues found in the previous MRT (& LRT) lines that can be turned into requirements and principles for MRT3 (amongst many others).

1. Stations in the middle of nowhere and/ or next to highways with no convenient pedestrian/ bicycle/ scooter access. 

2. Stations in the middle of a giant car park.  

3. Fences everywhere.  Don't block access to the station with fences.  If needed, use modal filters to prevent parking in undesirable areas.  But open up the area around the station to ensure easy flow of people (that means walking/ micro-mobility) to the station.

Stations should be well integrated with their surroundings and accessible without cars. Public transport will shift people out of their cars if you let it - but with the stick of poor first/ last mile connectivity and the carrot of lots of cheap parking at the MRT station, the effort will be undermined.

A local integration/ accessibility plan should be produced for each station in consultation with the local council and other major stakeholders.  This should cover a radius of at least 0.6km with the aim of making the station accessible without a car from multiple directions (ideally at least 3).  New pathways should be opened up where needed (if some land acquisition is needed for this, so be it) and covered walkways should be installed along routes with high footfall. 

4. Stations excessively high in the air.  Bring stations closer to the ground where possible.  If it's near a hill, connect the hill to concourse level with a linkbridge.  This is something that seems to be worse on the MRT lines than the LRT.

5. Awkward routes to platform level.  This is especially true in underground stations where there are sometimes excessive level changes too (e.g. LRT Masjid Jamek).  Routes to platform should be obvious, intuitive, direct, and low-effort.   

Solving point #4 first will go a long way to solving point #5.

6. Obscuring sight-lines in the station.  Keep sight-lines clear.  Allow people to see the way ahead - don't design a maze and don't block the view through railings with advertising boards (like at Bangsar LRT station).

Points #4 and #5 go together with accessibility for OKU, which is a fundamental requirement for public transport.

7. Poor wayfinding and signage.  If you have a sign with left and right directions, don't stack them on top of each other.  Split them to the left and to the right.  Display exploded views of the station so people can find their exit easily.  Display the next train times on big clear screens around the station.   There are many great design standards out there for signage and wayfinding - aim for the highest standard for Malaysia's public transport.

8. Having to pay to cross the road.  If the station has a route under or over a road, don't make people pay just to cross the road (e.g. Medan Tuanku Monorail).  Station access routes should be integrated with and form part of the wider city accessibility network. 

9. Lack of bicycle parking, poor quality rack design, or bicycle parking that gets clogged up with motorbikes. Make the bicycle parking inaccessible to motorbikes by putting the parking racks close together or raising it up a few steps.  Also provide good motorcycle parking.

10.  No plan for micro-mobility.  If there are safe convenient pathways, micro-mobility becomes an obvious first/last mile solution, easily widening the range around a station to 2km+.  Provide decent parking for people's own micromobility and provide some space for operators like Beam.  Et voila. 

11. Broken lifts and escalators. Specify high-quality, reliable equipment and undertake 'proactive maintenance' (not just reactive) during the night when stations are closed to the public. Provide well-proportioned steps (see point 4) as an alternative.

12. Lack of integration with the bus network and lack of bus information in the station.  Non-feeder busses can stop at MRT stations too if it's a strategic location.  Next bus information should be displayed clearly on screens as soon as you get out of the MRT gates, with clear signage to the bus stop, which should be nearby and covered.

13.  Poor interchange facilities.  Keep interchange stations compact with quick and easy connections between lines.  Make sure paid-to-paid access is provided.

14. If it's a real TOD, integrated with shopping centres etc, have a plan for micro-mobility access.  How are people going to get to the station from north, east, south and west? (Tip: don't make them park their thing far away and then walk).  Also have a plan for late night access.

15. Open the station until late at night (AFTER the last train has gone) and early in the morning.

These types of points can be added into a Requirements Register and Design Principles Matrix.  The principles can be grouped according to type (e.g., accessibility, safety, maintainability etc.), and ranked if needed.  The planners and designers of the stations will then need to demonstrate how they comply with the requirements and principles through their design documentation.  This is planning.  This is design. It must already be in place for other basic requirements (systems, lighting, PA etc.) but the evidence shows it is lacking in terms of accessibility.   MRT Corp needs to have the expertise to develop these requirements/ principles and enforce them.  The designers will almost certainly include international consultants who are well-versed in this kind of thing and should be able to develop compliant designs.

Stakeholders who can't understand the need to get into the station easily (perhaps they always drive and are suffering from 🚗🧠?) can go on training courses and workshops to develop their planning skills.  And they can start using public transport to get to work too.