Rapid KL and Metrobus drivers locking horns

It was the 5pm rush hour as I made my way from KL Sen­tral to the Rapid KL bus stop below the KL Mono­rail sta­tion. I had just met up with for­mer NS bud­dies, Zac and James at KLCC ear­lier and was head­ing home, des­ti­na­tion — Aman Sari, Puchong. Being not famil­iar with the Rapid KL bus codes, I took some effort get­ting on the right bus home. Nonethe­less, I hopped on bus U70 head­ing for Puchong Prima.

I chose a seat right behind the dri­ver for a good view of the road ahead so that I could iden­tify the bus sta­tion I would alight after hit­ting the STOP button.

Rapid KL buses lit­er­ally dom­i­nate the city’s pub­lic bus trans­port. There are at least two or three Rapid KL buses at a junc­tion in any given time. Their fleet being new, it is arguably more com­fort­able in a Rapid KL bus, air con­di­tion­ing on full blast so that you’re obliv­i­ous to the scorch­ing heat out­side, com­fort­able seats and clean inte­ri­ors. All these plus points in Rapid KL has some­how left the other pri­vate bus oper­a­tors des­per­ate to be more com­pet­i­tive to lure customers.


Rapid KL buses

So unsur­pris­ingly, our Rapid KL bus was caught in a stop and go traf­fic jam and there was this left turn. As the dri­ver pre­pared to turn left, a Metrobus made seem­ingly ille­gal turn and cut in front of our bus. Our bus dri­ver was furi­ous and slammed the horn a few times.

Now sur­pris­ingly, the Metrobus, now in front of us, slowed down and because it was a turn into a nar­rower road, I saw it’s bus doors flip open and the bus con­duc­tor stepped out into view. There was no traf­fic in front of the Metrobus and prob­a­bly in response to the honks our bus dri­ver gave ear­lier, the bus instruc­tor made a few head ges­tures towards the Rapid KL bus behind, as if pro­vok­ing for a fight. All our bus dri­ver did was mum­bling and kept shout­ing, ‘buat apa main macam itu, hah?

And then as if it was another attempt to bully, the Metrobus came to a com­plete halt, obvi­ously on pur­pose for there were no vehi­cles ahead, forc­ing our dri­ver to hit on his brakes with a screech. The Metrobus then accel­er­ated for­ward and away into the main road, leav­ing our bus dri­ver grum­bling under his breath even more.

There wasn’t much reac­tion in our bus which made me won­der if this is com­mon on KL roads. I was sur­prised at the imma­tu­rity of the bus dri­vers’. I know that there is stiff com­pe­ti­tion between the oper­a­tors and the Metrobus dri­vers are prob­a­bly agi­tated of Rapid KL’s dom­i­nance, but there really is no such need for actions like these. Go figure.

Any­way, Zac, James and I watched Wild Hogs at TGV ear­lier. Freak­ing hilar­i­ous movie I must say. After that, we just made a few rounds of win­dow shop­ping before head­ing home via LRT.

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