Mida team to promote projects along ECRL route
KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida) has set up a dedicated team to facilitate, evaluate and review the implementation of the Economic Accelerator Projects (EAP) along the East Coast Railway Link (ECRL) corridor.
The agency said this was a follow-up of the signing a memorandum of understanding with China Communications Construction Co Ltd (CCCC) last month in Beijing, witnessed by Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed and his China counterpart Li Keqiang.
Mida’s team will engage and facilitate development of industrial parks, logistics hub and transitoriented development (TOD) along the ECRL corridor, it said in a statement yesterday.
TOD is a community development that includes a mixture of housing, office, retail and/or other amenities integrated into a walkable neighbourhood and located within a half-mile of quality public transportation.
Under the original alignment, the 688km ECRL would pass through Kelantan, Terengganu, and Pahang before entering Selangor through Gombak and making its way to Serendah and Port Klang.
However, after a year of renegotiation, the new 640km ECRL alignment will now skip Bentong and Gombak.
It will, instead, turn south from Mentakab to Kuala Klawang in Negeri Sembilan before entering Selangor through Bangi/Kajang and then proceeding to Putrajaya Sentral and finally, Port Klang.
The railway track maintains the standard gauge design and is 640km in length.
The 160km/h train (80km/h max for freight) will pass through 20 stations from Kota Baru in Kelantan to Port Klang in Selangor, and the journey will take four hours.
It will leverage the existing KLIA Express Rail Link, as well as the future Mass Rapid Transit Line 2, with an interchange in Putrajaya Sentral and a direct link to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.