The newly-operational Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system is not meant to be compared with the speeds of private vehicles but should be seen as an effort to reduce traffic congestion, Prasarana group managing director Azmi Abdul Aziz said today.

This comes after some complaints that the MRT trains were running too slow, that it takes 40 minutes to travel the 21 km stretch from the Semantan station to the Sungai Buloh station.

Asked about this complaint, Azmi defended the speed of the MRT, saying that the purpose of building the MRT is to offload traffic from the roads.