Encourage safe driving and good service by complaining to RapidKL

TRANSIT believes that the public transport user has a strong role to play in making public transport better.

For this reason, we have always encouraged people to give us complaints and feedback about public transport services.

We have also been expressing our views to RapidKL and RapidPenang about the need to provide more information to help people give complaints and feedback.  But we know that it is not easy for the general public to do this.

For example, look at this image above, posted by the Malay Mail. It shows a RapidKL bus dropping off passengers in a dangerous manner.  If you wanted to report this dangerous action to RapidKL, what would you do? The location is obvious (you can see the PJ Hilton in the background) and you probably know the date and time of day, but the critical information (the bus registration number and the route number) are not easy to see.

Bus Identification Exercise

Fortunately, Prasarana has recently undertaken a “Bus Identification Exercise” to help RapidKL keep track of their fleet, with the following codes being used:

Code >  Model [Descriptions by TRANSIT]
D   >  Dong Feng [The original “City Shuttle” buses]
M  >   Mercedes Benz [The “long haul” buses]
K  >  Kosmo [TRANSIT is not familiar with these buses]
L  >  King Loong [The “big square” buses]
A  >  An Yuan [The “tiny” buses (physically smaller than the rest]
V   >  Volvo [The “accessible” buses]
I   >  Iveco [The “old” buses (formerly operated by Intrakota]

Here are two photos to give you an example of the Bus Identification codes

The advantage of this code system is that the public can now identify a bus easily, and then give feedback to RapidKL. If you can tell them exactly which bus is involved, they will know who the driver of the bus is.

For example, Moaz from TRANSIT took this photo of bus V089 (Volvo chassis) parked in the shoplot area of SS15 Subang Jaya. As you can see, it is much easier to see the bus identification code above than it is to look for the registration plate number below (which is blocked by the parked car).

And the RapidKL bus that crashed on 14 July has now been identified as bus L087 (King Long Chassis), as you can see from this photo below.

On a completely different side, we now know that RapidKL has modified one of their accessible buses, Bus V079 (also a Volvo chassis) by adding a second wheelchair ramp at the back of the bus.

In the “Information Age” that we live in, we must be able to use information effectively for the benefit of society and for ourselves. TRANSIT has been trying to get RapidKL to take advantage of technology by setting up their own SMS alert system and expanding their call centre so that it is operating with the same hours as the bus services.

In conversation with RapidKL, we have learned that these improvements are coming soon. We were also told that the bus identification code and a “Driver Identification Card” are going to be placed inside the bus, just above the driver’s seat. Visual samples will be presented to TRANSIT at a meeting next week.

In the meantime, now that RapidKL has a new twitter feed (MYrapidKL). Twitter users can tweet to MYrapidKL about disruptions to service, dangerous driving, traffic jams, pilferage and other things.

We will keep you up-to-date on these improvements as they occur.