A MALAYSIAN consortium has been awarded the system package 1 contract of Sarawak’s automated rapid transit (ART) system, implementer of the Kuching urban transportation, Sarawak Metro Sdn Bhd, announced today.

The contract, valued at RM1.425 billion is for the supply of hydrogen-powered ART vehicles, depot equipment and maintenance vehicles (DEMV), signalling and control system (S&CS) and the automatic platform gate (APG).

The vehicles are driverless and the vehicles will run on dedicated trackless lanes running on rubber tyres. 

Each vehicle can carry up to 300 passengers, with a speed of up to 70km/h.

The consortium, EPR Mobilus GR JV Sdn Bhd, is a joint venture of EPR (Kuching) Sdn Bhd and two peninsula-based companies Mobilus Sdn Bhd and Global Rail Sdn Bhd.

Sarawak Metro said EPR Mobilus GR will work with the Chinese firms CRRC Zhuzhou Institute Company Limited and CIMC-Hexagon Hydrogen Energy Systems Limited for the ART vehicles,  Thales for the signalling and control system, Fangda Innotech Company Limited for the automatic platform gate and DOM Industries (M) Sdn Bhd and CRRC Zhuzhou Institute Company Limited for the depot equipment and maintenance vehicles.

Sarawak Metro, a wholly owned subsidiary of Sarawak Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), said the Letter of Award was handed over yesterday.

Sarawak Metro’s Chief Executive Officer Mazli Mustaffa handed over the letter to the JV company’s directors, Syahrir Iman Suib, Chan Chee Kian and Wilson Fan.

It was witnessed by Minister of Transport Sarawak Lee Kim Shin, who represented the Premier of Sarawak Abang Johari Openg.

In Abang Johari’s address, he said hydrogen propulsion was chosen for the ART vehicles as it was in line with the state’s green hydrogen agenda and the development of its hydrogen economy.

The premier also disclosed that the government had approved Sarawak Metro’s proposal for a line to Santubong in phase 1 of the project.

“Among other considerations, the alignment looks at the future development plans for the Santubong peninsula and the potential for growth for the area with the tourism and leisure sector as the main catalyst,” he said.

He said although the new line will be about 20km longer than the earlier proposal, “we have managed to keep the overall cost of the project to below RM6 billion”.

The original phase 1 proposal was to have only two lines and 27 stations covering approximately 52 kilometres in distance.

SEDC chairman Abdul Aziz Husain also disclosed that the system package 2 tender, which involved telecommunications, supervisory control and data acquisition, automatic fare collection, computerised maintenance management system, operation control centre and information technology system had closed.

He said an announcement of the contract award would follow “in the next few weeks”. – July 19, 2022.