Really, Penang is to get a monorail over Penang Bridge. I do not know when and whether it will materialise but it will be a piece of good news. Read about it:

Melewar keen to build monorail over Penang Bridge
By Zuraimi Abdullah and Francis Fernandez
bt@nstp.com.my

June 23 2006

MELEWAR Industrial Group Bhd is interested in building a high-speed monorail network over the current Penang Bridge as part of its wider plan to construct a mass transit system for Penang Island.

“There is a plan to build a monorail over the current Penang Bridge and we mentioned it during our presentation to the Prime Minister,” the group’s head of business development Datuk Eric Lim said in an email reply to Business Times.

The cost of building such a network is believed to be in range of RM150 million.

“The monorail over the Penang Bridge will probably be in stage 2 because what is most important is to ensure that Melewar concentrates on the proposed monorail within the island,” said Lim.

Melewar is proposing to build a 51.12km Hi-Track ultra light loop monorail system in Penang within 28 months, if it gets the nod from the Government.

Its total fixed lump sum cost for the project is RM1.58 billion, documents provided by Melewar show. The same documents also show that Melewar expects the rail network to start churning profits in its ninth year of operations.

“This is one monorail that will be linked from point to point unlike what you see in KL. Once the proposed project is completed, we need to work with the relevant authorities on the extension to the mainland province,” said Lim.

Meanwhile, at a press conference yesterday, Melewar managing director Tunku Datuk Ya’acob Tunku Abdullah said that Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was pleased with its proposal for the Penang monorail system, and had asked the Economic Planning Unit (EPU) to study it.

He added that Melewar’s advantage is in its cost structure.

“The average cost for the monorail system in KL is RM60 million per km … our cost is RM30 million per km,” Tunku Ya’acob said.

The 65km monorail that runs across the central business districts of KL was built by KL Infrastructure Group (KLIG) Bhd in 2004, at a cost of RM9 billion.

Todate, the company has yet to make a profit from the venture, suffering two consecutive years of losses.

For the year ended April 2004, KLIG suffered a net loss of RM46.2 million, while in 2005, the net loss widened to RM75.9 million.

KLIG, together with its parent MTrans Holdings Bhd, is also one of three companies which have submitted bids to the Government for the monorail project in Penang.

Meanwhile, Melewar had surprised many when it said early this year that it was in the running for the contract.

The market had anticipated that MMC Metrail Sdn Bhd, a unit linked to tycoon by Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary, may bag the award.

MMC Metrail, in which Syed Mokhtar’s flagship MMC Corp Bhd has a 20 per cent stake, was given a letter of exclusivity to undertake the job by the Government.

The letter was given on October 1 2003 to build a RM1.1 billion 37km long light monorail transit that will help link Komtar and Bayan Lepas.

Business Times was told that MMC Metrail is still in negotiations with the Government for the job.

It is firmly believed that the company had met key officials from the EPU early this month for an extensive briefing on the project structure.

MMC Metrail chairman Datuk Abdul Kadir Deen, however, declined to comment on the matter, except to say that the company has been working closely with the authorities over a long period of time on this project.