Malaysia Rapid Transit Corporation Sdn Bhd (MRT Corp) hosted a visit by the 11th Malaysian Road Conference & Exhibition 2022 delegates to Chan Sow Lin MRT Station on 13 October 2022.

The underground station is part of the MRT Putrajaya (PY) Line stations and was selected as one of the technical visit venues. The technical visit to MRT Project was held to showcase key road sector and transportation projects in the Greater Klang Valley and highlight Malaysia’s newest state-of-the-art public transportation infrastructure.

Ts. Noor Aiman Samsudin, Project Manager I of MRT PY Line welcomed the delegates and gave an introduction about MRT Corp, its role and function in developing the two MRT lines in Klang Valley – the MRT Kajang (KG) Line, and MRT PY Line. Ts. Noor Aiman also gave overall planning of the MRT PY Line, project alignment criteria, and update on the construction progress to the 30 delegates who were mostly public administrators, urban planners, and engineers from Malaysia, and one delegate was from Kenya.

The technical visit continued with a presentation from Mohar Zainal Abidin, Senior Manager, Public Relations & Stakeholder Management of MMC-GAMUDA KVMRT (PDP) Sdn Bhd, Project Delivery Partner for the MRT PY Line.

The knowledge-sharing session began with the importance and benefit of having MRT in Klang Valley. The advantages of MRT include lower traveling expenditure, convenience, reduced traffic congestion, environmental protection, time-saving, safety, and boosting the economy. Mohar then continued with a presentation on the project overview in which MRT PY Line will have 36 operational stations. He then went on to describe the Station Theme of both elevated and underground stations. For the station theme, MRT PY Line stations are categorized into three themes – Heritage Stations, Contemporary Stations, and Progressive Stations and each station has its own personalization. The delegates then learned about the exterior and interior design of MRT PY Line Trains. For example, the trains’ exterior – the color livery strongly, emphasizes the powerful expression of the front-end style. The front-end mask is made of strongly structured shapes and volumes, expressing decision, safety, and confidence. For the interior, the seats are in an assortment of blue colors to bring visual animation and echo the Putrajaya Lake surroundings.

The knowledge-sharing session also highlighted the challenges that occurred during the construction works such as working within confined spaces/tight corridors and densely populated areas, working within close proximity to high-rise buildings/residential areas and tunneling works under live traffic, busy and main roads with risks of depressions and sinkholes.

The delegates also learned Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) and digital transformation to Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a way to move forward.

The technical visit ended with a tour around the Chan Sow Lin MRT Station and the delegates were brought to the bridge connecting the MRT and LRT.