On arriving at the Putra LRT station in KL Sentral on 11 December at 0010H, I was refused entry into the station and was denied a much needed ride on the public transport system to get home.

I was refused entry because “operations had stopped”, at least that was the excuse I was given by the station supervisor. And yet casual observation from within KL Sentral revealed that more than one train were stilll travelling through the station in the direction I needed to go, the trains would stop at the station and the trains were still filled with passengers.

When confronted, the station supervisor confirmed my observations. In fact, I was told that these trains were going to stop at every single station until the one I needed to get to. Nevertheless, I was still refused entry because “operations had stopped“. Putra LRT would only let passengers off, but not on.

I find this rather illogical, not to mention preposterous. I would understand being denied entry if there were no more trains ferrying passengers travelling in the direction I needed to go but as it were, I would hardly consider the operations as having “stopped”. After all, how much more cost and effort would Putra LRT incur in allowing passengers on to trains that were already in operation, that already had passengers onboard and that were scheduled to stop at every single station. While I might agree that the additional revenue might not amount to much, I suspect that the additional costs would also be negligible. But the more important issue is that their present “policy” is denying the public, who need it the most, an invaluable service for a very illogical reason. Instead of boarding a train that was still in operation, I had to pay ten times as much to catch a taxi home. Like most car-loving Malaysian, if it was an option, I would not be relying on public transportation at all.

This was the second time that this has happened to me and frankly, I find this “policy” rather unacceptable.

Posted on December 13th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: My Malaysia