The convenience of tickets

Transport accessibility is often focused on physical aspects as they tend to be the most obvious.  Other components of accessibility include wayfinding, access to information (maps, apps), and access to convenient ticket options.

Recently some tourists were overheard asking at the MRT station ticket counter:

"please can we buy a day pass"

The answer came back bluntly:

"we don't do a day pass".

The rest of the conversation was not heard but it sounded like the tourists were confused and had some follow-up questions. 

On the train, day passes and 3-day passes are advertised.  There is a small hash-tag mentioning domestic tourism, but it's in Malay and not particularly clear. 

It turns out the 1-day and 3-day passes are only for Malaysians.  There is no equivalent option for tourists. 

So, what does the tourism ministry think of this? Does it agree with the policy of no equivalent passes for non-Malaysians, or does it think the convenience it might bring to tourists is worth pushing for?

Clearly someone thinks it's a worthy idea, as there appears to have been a ticket like this introduced in 2019 as shown on this page: https://www.klia2.info/promotions/mycity-pass/

At the link, the then-Chief Operating Officer of Prasarana is quoted as saying:

“Our regular customers have the privilege of unlimited travel with the use of the My100 pass for 30-day unlimited travels on our rail and BRT networks. On the other hand, these new passes provide immense convenience to non-Malaysians and non-regular users to travel unlimitedly within a short period of time.

This initiative is also part of our contribution to Malaysia’s tourism industry as traveling on our integrated rail and BRT network will allow you to extensively cover Klang Valley and Selangor, which is blessed with plenty of places of interests, food paradise and shopping outlets”

So, someone gets it.  And clearly, tourists are interested in a ticket like this.  It wouldn't be difficult to survey tourists in KL to further gauge the appetite for it.

This issue was highlighted in Twitter, which generated plenty of comments.

Some commenters didn't seem to understand that there could be a different price for tourists and locals, if needed.

Other commenters felt the need to say that the Malaysian day pass was "subsidised" but none of them managed to explain why they thought this was important or even relevant.

Public transport in Malaysia is typically subsidised, as is travel on the road.  There are various questions for policymakers and planning professionals to think about, including:

• what mode share do we want for tourist transport?
• do we want to encourage tourists to come to Malaysia, and what part can transport play in that?

In terms of attracting tourists, convenient, efficient transport has its part to play - this shouldn't be underestimated.  Arguably the biggest factor is convenience.  While still important, price is usually secondary.  The price just needs to be affordable.  Certainty in price is also important, and a day pass will give this. 

This Blog is not the place for an in-depth analysis of these opinions, but it is hard not to think that this near-obsession with "subsidised" prices and special prices for Malaysians is mainly coming from a place of ignorance and mean-spiritedness, in the absence of any clear logical explanation of the sentiment. 

The point of helping the country prosper by making it attractive to tourists seems to get missed by many.  There are even some commenters talking about exchange rates and the relative weakness of the Ringgit, totally missing the irony that what they want will probably make it worse!

To be fair, there were also various sensible comments on the Twitter post - let's hope these attitudes can pervade Malaysian transport to make it a better place for everyone.

MRT Serdang Raya Utara

This is a new station on the MTR Putrajaya Line, which finally opened in March 2023.

Billions of ringgit were spent on the new MRT line but station access is still a failure. It is not that difficult to understand desire lines and create convenient pedestrian crossings.

The station is opposite a bustling area - it should be as easy as possible to get to the station from here. But there is a 6 lane road in the way and fences along the walkway under the station.

Bridges, ramps, escalators, lifts have all been included in the design, but crossing the road has not been solved. Come on MRTCorp and MBSJ. It’s time to prioritise walking and wheeling.

This is just one example of poor access into a big MRT station. There are many more/ worse examples.

So there is a long term problem with this stuff. MRTCorp and the councils need to do some serious thinking about the purpose of MRT stations.
It is critical that the stakeholders *work together* and the integration plan for the station and surrounding area needs to be prioritised - it’s not optional. Quite often it is nothing to do with cost - it is just prioritising the right things and using good design principles.
These design principles are fairly straightforward - give a good design consultant the guidance and they will come up with something that works. The hard part is getting that standard and guidance in place, agreeing to prioritise what needs to be prioritised, and daring to slow down car drivers for the benefit of more efficient modes of city transport.
Interestingly, someone posted an earlier design of the station access, which included a footbridge across the road.
https://twitter.com/JdUnknownperson/status/1675079230970015744?s=20
There have been comments on the Twitter post about cut-backs - perhaps this footbridge was one of the casualties. However, footbridges are rarely the answer, and access into stations can be excellent without footbridges. (The footbridges in Brickfields, which are very high but only take you across a narrow road, take the concept of footbridges across roads to extremes of absurdity.) Usually, a simple pedestrian crossing will be all that's needed, as long as it gives priority to pedestrians. This doesn't need to cost a lot of money and can usually be done within the same budget as the road resurfacing around the station.