Eid-ul-Azha Rush: Train Ticket Sales Hit All-Time High

KUALA LUMPUR: The Keretapi Tanah Melayu Bhd (KTMB) is adding 347,000 seats for the upcoming long holiday time. This is the biggest increase in capacity that the company has ever seen.
This is to accommodate a huge increase in demand caused by three big public holidays happening at the same time in two weeks: Hari Raya Aidiladha, Wesak Day, and the official birthday of His Majesty Sultan Ibrahim, King of Malaysia.

KTMB group CEO Datuk Azlan Shah Al Bakri said that the company’s train service capacity for the holiday season was higher than any other time in its history. We are selling more tickets than ever before for Hari Raya Aidiladha because the holiday period is longer this time. In fact, we sold more tickets than ever before for Hari Raya Aidilfitri. “During the last holiday season, we only had 150,000 seats, but now we have 347,000, so the current capacity has more than doubled,” he told Bernama when they met at KL Sentral on May 23.

Azlan Shah said that almost 80% of the tickets, or 270,000 tickets, for more than 900 train rides have already been bought. There are still between 60,000 and 70,000 tickets left, though.

He said that all tickets for the Ekspres Rakyat Timuran service on the East Coast sector had been bought. In the southern sector (Kuala Lumpur-Johor Bahru), 88% of tickets were sold, and in the northern sector (Kuala Lumpur-Padang Besar), 82% were sold.

To help people who are going back to their hometowns save money on travel, KTMB has also launched the Madani30 programme, which gives riders a 30% discount as long as they follow certain rules. “For the Ekspres Lambaian Aidiladha (ELA) service, we are also giving a 30% discount on the superior seat category to make things easier for people and help them get where they need to go,” Azlan Shah said.

When asked about operational readiness, he said that all technical parts had been fully activated to make sure that passengers were safe and comfortable. This included making sure that train sets, tracks, signalling systems, and business continuity plans were all available.

He also said that problems with fake tickets would not happen because of ticketless boarding systems that use smartphone apps and the Open Payment System that KTMB has put in place. – Bernama