IT is better to upgrade existing rail links between Kuala Lumpur and Johor instead of converting the scrapped Kuala Lumpur-Singapore high-speed rail (HSR) into a domestic network.

Socio-Economic Research Centre executive director Lee Heng Guie said there is also a question on whether there is a need for a HSR system to connect Kuala Lumpur to Johor.

“We have existing lines from KL to Johor Baru. You just have to upgrade the track,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

Lee said there must have been a lot of thought that went into the decision to terminate the agreement as it went through several rounds of negotiations.

“This is something that has been mooted from the previous administration. I believe that before they came up with this proposal, they did some studies,” he said.

“It is not something that was decided within one year.”

Meanwhile, Alliance DBS Singapore said in a note earlier this month that without Singapore’s participation in the HSR project, the last-mile connectivity between the two countries will be via the Johor Baru–Singapore rapid transit system (RTS).

“There were two project delivery partner (PDP) joint ventures (JV) awarded for the HSR prior to GE14 – the northern section (Gamuda-MRCB JV) and southern section (YTL and TH Properties JV).

“We understand that over the past year, the government contemplated awarding this contract on a turnkey basis but this has since changed to a build-operate-transfer (BOT) model given the Malaysian government’s strained balance sheet,” it added.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Najib Razak said in a Facebook post soon after the announcement that the country will lose the opportunity to earn trillions of ringgit in the next 20 years if the KL-Singapore HSR was replaced with the Johor Baru-KL HSR.

He said the RM60 billion project, which was conceived during his tenure, would have increased tourist arrivals from Singapore by 50%. This would also have allowed Malaysia to rake in RM12.5 billion a year from the spending of Singaporeans in Malaysia.

Sources told The Malaysian Insight recently that Malaysia expects to pay around RM65 billion for the HSR, excluding the trains, if it were to undertake the project on its own.

Citing this, Najib said the cost of the KL-JB HSR will not be much different than the original cost of RM60-68 billion with Singapore’s participation.

Stopping the rail link in JB will also result in passenger load being halved from 8.4 million a year to 4.2 million by 2031.

The former prime minister said this will have a big impact in terms of ticket pricing, eventually leading to losses.

“If it is changed to JB only and it becomes slower compared to the original speed of 350kph, the project will not be able to compete with flights between KL and Singapore,” he said.

“This aviation sector is the busiest in the world and the HSR is expected to reduce the cost of ticket, travel time and air pollution as electric trains are more efficient and pollute less,” he said. 

Singapore and Malaysia entered into a bilateral agreement for the project in 2016.

The project was put on ice in 2018 after Pakatan Harapan won the general election. The new government had asked for and received a deferral of two years from Singapore, paying S$15 million (RM45 million) for the favour.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Mustapa Mohamed said terms of the agreement, inked in 2016, were no longer viable given that the country’s fiscal situation is affected adversely because of Covid-19.

Putrajaya proposed a number of changes since mid-2019, including the project structure, alignment and station design.

“However, we had not been able to come to an agreement on these changes. Therefore, the agreement lapsed on December 31, 2020,” Mustapa added.

In a separate statement, Singapore’s Transport Ministry said Malaysia will compensate the city state because of the termination.

Mustapa said Malaysia will honour its obligations under the terminated HSR bilateral agreement with Singapore and will determine the quantum of compensation. – January 2, 2021.