Free Sunway Community Shuttle Bus service launched 1 April 2009

TRANSIT has learned that the Sunway Group has launched a free community shuttle bus service serving the PJS9 and PJS11 (Bandar Sunway) Communities. You can see more information here.

According to the website, the shuttle service begins daily at 7.00am while the final bus operates at 9.30pm. As you can see from the image below, the service links many of the busy places in Sunway.

Pick up / Drop Off Zones:

1. Pyramid Hotel
2. Resort Hotel
3. Pyramid Lion Head
4. Theme Park Entrance
5. Sunway University Side Gate
6. Monash Univesity
7. Sun -U Residence
8. Medical Centre
9. Menara Sunway

TRANSIT says:

The free shuttle bus service is a phenomenon that shows up occasionally in Malaysia. Well-known examples of the service  include:

• The One Card Express linking Kelana Jaya LRT station and parts of Bandar Utama to 1 Utama

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• The shuttle bus link between Kelana Jaya LRT station and the Ikano Power Centre (we are providing a 3rd party link because we cannot find the info at the IKANO website).

• The shuttle bus link between Kelana Jaya LRT station, KDU College, and the Tropicana City Mall Development
• The former U-pod bus service linking colleges in Subang Jaya and Sunway to 1 Utama
• The link between Bangsar LRT station and Midvalley MegaMall
• The PJ Community Shuttle Bus service
• The Seremban Community Shuttle Bus service

These services are often provided as a basic frill, by a corporation or local government that wants to show a commitment to public transport and the community.

Unfortunately these services are usually “one-off” and not properly linked in planning and operations to the broader public transport network.

Because these services exist in isolation, they are at the mercy of cost-cutting efforts and are easily sacrificed.

So while we commend Sunway for making the effort, we wish to say that without a serious and holistic effort, including more buses and better links to public transport, these shuttle buses are really a nice effort but not the real solution that we need.