What's not to like?
A convenient, high capacity and affordable rail link from KL's cute city airport to its central transportation hub.
The Skypark Link, opened in May 2018, will take you from Subang Airport straight into KL Sentral.
Sounds like a really good idea. And the execution?
Here goes.
The basics are there - a twin-track, electrified railway line with a station close to the airport. Let's start with the station access. After going to the expense of building a train station 200m away from the airport building, the planners (or those above them) then went and threw the benefits away in typical fashion - by making it awkward to access.
The major problems come from the usual suspects - cars and car infrastructure.
There is a pedestrian bridge connected into the airport building, although this is not well sign-posted. There is also no train departure screen in the airport, so you don't get convenient information for the next trains. This information can be so useful - it can be the difference between relaxing while sipping a cold brew, or hurrying over to the train station only to find that the train just left and there isn't one for another hour.
The bridge is covered, but has a steep spiral staircase and small lift that spits you out next to the car park. While it may be called a pedestrian bridge, it is really infrastructure for cars. To keep people 'out of the way'.
From the lift to the station is just across the car park. But, surprise surprise, cars have been prioritised again, so pedestrians have to make their way along the path skirting the edge of the car park. This is about a 280m walk, with a cover. If you try to walk directly towards the station, a guard will wildly blow his whistle at you (but probably won't be bothered to chase you).
Once you get near to the station, if you walked inside the car park, you'll be greeted by a fence and a gate. Locked of course.
After going up to bridge level, down to the car park, and walking a total of 345m (if you follow the designated route) you finally make it to the train station - and don't exactly get a welcoming greeting.
A dull, boring ticket area with information displays not function properly. If you are ready to catch your train, you then have to go up to platform level. So to recap, it's up to the bridge, down to car park, and up again to platform.
Now to the train. There is roughly one every hour, although it's slightly randomised and doesn't leave at the same time past each hour (
ktmb.com.my/TrainTime.html). It takes about 35 minutes to get to KL Sentral (after stopping only at Subang Jaya on the way). 35 minutes may not sound bad, but let's think about that. The route is about 26km. So average speed is 26 / (35/60) = 45 kph. This is very poor. For comparison, the KLIA Ekspres takes about 28 minutes to go 57 km (118 kph average speed). Granted, Skypark has to share tracks with all the other KTM services for most of the route, and there are railway upgrading works going on nearer to KL. But really, this is painfully slow.
With low traffic, you can make it from Subang Airport to KL Sentral in a car in 25 minutes.
The train itself is a commuter style affair, with lots of luggage storage space.
The driver's door wouldn't close, so you might get to see the journey through the windscreen (better than through the dirty windows.) But the train does the job.
A ticket was originally RM 11 between the airport and KL Sentral. In 2022 this was drastically cut - to RM 3.50 - presumably in a (desperate?) bid to improve the ridership of the service.
After spending your RM 3.50 and arriving into KL Sentral - you might be greeted by ...
Broken escalators!
To summarise the Skypark experience.
- Awkward to get from airport to station
- Cheap
- Slow
- Reasonably good destinations for onward connections (Subang Jaya and KL Sentral).
The good news for the Skypark link is that its technical problems can be addressed very simply.
1. Build an elevated walkway across the car park directly into the station. Connect directly into platform level so that those who don't need to buy a ticket can go straight through some barriers onto the platform. Add functioning train departure screens in the airport and include clearer signage to funnel people towards the train.
2. If an elevated walkway isn't going to happen (for whatever reason), re-route the walking path at ground level in a straight line through the car park. Also, add escalators between the bridge and the car park. These escalators should be in line with the intended direction of travel. Reconfigure the parking bays around the walking route to make this work. Prioritise the pedestrians - it's that simple. There's plenty of guidance around on how to make good, accessible routes.
3. Address the frequency and speed of the train service (this is a whole other topic, and, granted, will take a long time before it's possible).
(As a bonus point, sort the bridge out over the NKVE. The one that lorries keep crashing into because it's too low.)
