Mass transit payment system craziness in KL
Upon arriving in Kuala Lumpur nearly two weeks ago, I quickly found myself needing to take a trip on the Light Rail Transit. Not wanting to queue up for a ticket every time I rode it, I made a cursory inquiry about more convenient forms of payment and was told I could buy a monthly pass for February but until then my best bet would be a stored value card so I bought one.
A couple of days later I needed to use the other LRT line but my card wouldn't let me in so I saw the attendant for help and was informed that I needed a different card for this line, even though both lines are operated by the same company! It was therefore no shock to me when I discovered that the monorail, which is run by a different company (rather like BART in SF), required yet another stored value card.
Yesterday one of my LRT cards ran out of money so I looked at the RapidKL website to figure out the best option going forward, since I was getting annoyed at having to use three different payment cards. It turns out that they do have two options for a unified payment system. The first one is the unlimited monthly pass. Well, they actually offer different levels of monthly pass: RM100 for both LRTs or RM150 for both LRTs and the monorail. I bought the latter for February.
The other payment system is pay-as-you-go not unlimited use but it requires only an RM10 deposit and can be topped up as needed. It also works on not just the LRT an monorail but a bunch of other random things like theme parks and such. For people who don't make heavy use of public transit (like me in March, when I'll be doing a fair bit of travelling outside KL) this system is the best choice.
