Report: ECRL could see change in alignment, again

KUALA LUMPUR (July 4): A proposal has been made to change the East Coast Railway Line’s (ECRL) alignment yet again, reported The Edge Malaysia in its latest issue.

The proposal calls for the line to “revert to the original alignment that was proposed by the Barisan Nasional (BN) government”, a source told the weekly.

“We do not know how serious the plan is or whether it will reach the Cabinet even, but we do know it is being talked about,” an official of Malaysia Rail Link Sdn Bhd (MRL) said on condition of anonymity.

The same report also stated that “the proposal has been discussed in a national council meeting chaired by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin recently”.

The changes being proposed are supposed to be “mainly in Section C of the project, which is the portion of the railway track in the Klang Valley that connects to Port Klang”.

According to the weekly, Minister of Transport Datuk Seri Wee Ka Siong “is understood to have brought up the proposal to restore the ECRL to its old alignment”.

Wee told The Edge when contacted that the government is evaluating the options for the alignment, and that the “new one suggested by the then chairman of the Council of Eminent Persons Tun Daim Zainuddin was a not fixed alignment but a proposal”.

There are still issues to be considered, including how the proposed alignment will affect the land it will pass through, Wee added.

The original plane for the ECRL project had 24 stations. The Pakatan Harapan government then reduced the number of stations to 20, and endeavoured to reduce the cost of the mega project by foregoing a tunnel through the Titiwangsa mountains and realigning the line track via Seremban.

The previous government also wanted the line to end at Kuantan instead of the plan under the BN which calls for the ECRL to end in Kelantan.

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Read the full report in this week’s The Edge Malaysia