by BERNAMA/ pic by MUHD AMIN NAHARUL

PRASARANA Malaysia Bhd (Prasarana), the provider of Malaysia’s urban rail and a chain of stage bus services in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Penang, Perak and Pahang, aims to bring back the pre-COVID-19 average daily ridership of 1.1 million by year-end.

While acknowledging that the pandemic has impacted the ridership figures with the enforcement of the Movement Control Order (MCO) since March 18, Prasarana said the current trend has shown an uptick from 16 per cent in March to 60 per cent to date.

“This shows that the ridership for both Prasarana’s rail and bus services is steadily picking up with the reopening of the local economies and more people returning to work,” it said in a statement.

Prasarana, meanwhile, ticked off tech-driven automotive content hub WapCar over its recent survey on usage of public transport, saying that the survey was biased and its findings were misleading.

“The survey, which ran for a week in Wapcar’s Facebook in July, had a sample size of only 318 respondents and carried only one question about public transport.

“Extrapolating the response to conclude that ‘over 90 per cent of Malaysians are concerned about taking public transportation’ is over-reaching and misleading.

“These 318 respondents cannot represent the opinion of millions of public transport users, much less the opinion of 31 million Malaysians,” said Prasarana.

WapCar’s recent survey found that over 90 per cent of Malaysians are concerned about taking public transportation amidst the COVID-19 health threat, preferring to self-drive as a safety measure.

The findings show that 57.9 per cent of respondents would not take public transportation; while 32.7 per cent would, despite being concerned about health safety.