Transport Minister Anthony Loke speaks during a press conference at Prasarana headquarters in Kuala Lumpur January 8, 2019. — Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 8 — The My50 pass for unlimited rides on public buses from Budget 2019 will be expanded to Penang shortly, said Transport Minister Anthony Loke.

Loke said public transport operator Prasarana Malaysia Bhd has been instructed to begin studies on how to introduce the programme there following its successful Klang Valley rollout.

“We want to kick off the second phase of the passes by introducing it in Penang for the RapidPenang busses there.

“There are many routes on the island which are used by RapidPenang, so we hope to introduce this phase either by the second quarter or second half of this year,” he said during the press conference here the Prasarana headquarters in Bangsar.

Prasanara has also been directed to study how to introduce the scheme in other states.

Today, Loke disclosed that 30,653 people signed up for the My100 unlimited pass over the last week.

The My100 pass enables holders to utilise all Prasarana services including MRT, LRT, monorail, BRT Sunway, RapidKL buses, and MRT feeder buses every month for only RM100.

He said there were already 65,125 subscribers for the pass, which has been used 682,000 times since its launch.

“On January 2 itself, a total of 12,187 new subscribers signed up for the My100 pass, with thousands more signing up each day.

“We are confident of reaching our target of at least 200,000 passengers using these passes, which will in turn lower the amount of government subsidy needed for this initiative,” he said.

Loke explained his ministry is allocating around RM6.5 million a month for the initiative to cushion the losses suffered by Prasarana.

“Once we reach our target of 200,000 passengers, the government will only need to subsidise RM4 million.

“Anything more than that would just translate to less subsidies needed from the government,” he explained.

Loke added the ministry has also directed Prasarana to carry out studies on ways to introduce more payment methods used for the My50 and My100 passes, following grouses by users about using their MyKads.

“Passengers are afraid that after tapping their MyKad every day, they might end up losing it.

“We are looking at ways on accepting payments from various credit and debit cards, to broaden it beyond just the MyKads and Touch N’ Go,” he revealed.