KINIBIZ In early 2013, the prime ministers of Malaysia and Singapore, Najib Abdul Razak and Lee Hsien Loong, announced that the neighbours will join the exclusive high-speed rail (HSR) club. The duo said that a RM40 billion HSR link will be built from Kuala Lumpur to the Singapore city centre by 2020.

The two leaders have reiterated their commitment to build the link many times since then, most recently at the sixth Singapore-Malaysia Leaders’ Retreat on May 5, 2014. Following this, Singapore confirmed that its terminus will be located in Jurong East.

Malaysia had already announced that its terminus will be situated at 1Malaysia Development Bhd’s Bandar Malaysia development, which is located at the former Royal Malaysian Air Force base in Sungai Besi.

The leaders also confirmed that the initial 2020 target would most likely be missed as there is still much for the two nations to discuss and settle. This was unsurprising as aside from the terminuses and station locations, not much else has been finalised so far, including a possible funding structure.

The question is, does Malaysia really need such a link to justify the enormous price tag of RM40 billion?

Answering this is challenging because it requires some assumptions to be made, given that there are no publicly available feasibility reports which would indicate relevant growth of travel trends. But between the high costs, gaining a sufficient ridership, and being profitable in the long run, there are serious concerns as to whether this would be billions well spent.

For the full story go to KINIBIZ .