Malaysia’s 1,000km north-south electric train service (ETS), which was belatedly relaunched on Saturday, halves cross-country travel time and could open remote rural towns to tourism in a country famously dependent on its cars.
Advertisement
But to unlock its real potential, the travel industry says more of the line’s Chinese-made trains need to be deployed, while the route – which runs along west Malaysia from the Thai border down to Singapore – needs a major publicity campaign to capture the imagination of local and foreign travellers.
Over a century old, the railway has been slowly modernised to enable faster and more reliable travel.
A second parallel track now allows two-way services and the entire route has been electrified, and level crossings removed.
While the northern stretch from Kuala Lumpur to the Thai border has been operational since 2010, the delay-plagued southern stretch was only launched on Saturday, with service from the capital to the small town of Kluang, two thirds of the southern span.
Advertisement