LRT3 under Pakatan: Ballooning expenses but fewer stations, delayed completion date & shortened trains
The rail transit in Malaysia is intended to be an effective public transport system to take drivers off the roads as the daily traffic congestion worsens in the bustling capital of Malaysia.
Currently, the Kelana Jaya and Ampang LRT lines serve over a million commuters a day.
Emboldened by the success stories of the two existing LRT line, the third LRT line, also known as the LRT 3 project, is announced in 2015; and its cost capped at RM9 billion.
Days ago, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng waltzed in out of nowhere and suddenly ballooned the cost to a whopping RM31.45 billion.
He then claimed that he had successfully slashed the cost of LRT3 by 47% to RM16.63 billion.
IF Lim Guan Eng expects praises and a pat on the back,
he is going to be massively disappointed.
Even at the discounted price Lim Guan Eng claims to be, the whole LRT3 project is going to cost up to RM7.63 billion more than what was planned by the previous government.
And to make things worse, under his governance, Malaysians are paying more for a diminished LRT 3 project in return.
Under the old government, for only RM9 billion, we could have
had 26 stations
with sizable terminals,
44 train sets,
all of them 6-coach trains,
and all set to be completed by the year 2020.
On the other hand, the new government is offering us the LRT 3
not only at a ballooned cost of RM16.63 billion,
but with 6 stations less,
overall smaller terminal areas,
only 22 train sets,
each downgraded into a 3-coach train,
and be delayed till year 2024.
With expected population growth, will commuters be riding on the shortened LRT3 like this?
Our Finance Minister irrefutably has exceptional skills, but skills more aptly identified as the street smarts of
peddling merchants of Petaling Street.
Like these merchants who try to sell you a fake Rolex watch, the man would first, jack up the price of an item, in LGE’s case, the national debt or the cost of HSR and LRT 3.
Then, he would declare that he had somehow halved the price for the sake of Malaysia.
Many unwitting Malaysians have thought they have struck a real bargain with the so called “cost reduction” of LRT 3; when in fact, they are simply
hoodwinked by one gifted, crafty peddler.
