Lines and Stations
The Ampang Line consists of two routes with a total length of 27 kilometres that begin at two different stations to the south and east of the city, meeting at an interchange station, continuing through the city centre and ending at the same station at the north. The Ampang Branch Line begins at AG8 Ampang, while the Sri Petaling Branch Line begins at PH8 Sri Petaling. Both lines converge at AG1 ST1 PH1 Chan Sow Lin; the merged line leads to the north, terminating at ST11 Sentul Timur. The Ampang to Sultan Ismail was the first phase of the system to open, on 16 December 1995, with the second stretch from Chan Sow Lin to Sri Petaling operational on 11 July 1998, primarily for accessibility to the National Sports Complex during the 1998 Commonwealth Games via the PH7 Bukit Jalil station. The section between Sultan Ismail and Sentul Timur opened on 6 December 1998.
The line between ST4 Plaza Rakyat and Sentul Timur is an elevated railway, running along the Gombak River between Bandaraya and Titiwangsa. The Chan Sow Lin-Ampang line is primarily at surface level, using a previously disused railway formation, while the Chan Sow Lin-Plaza Rakyat line and the Sri Petaling-Chan Sow Lin line use a combination of surface-level and elevated tracks. There are no underground sections.
The system includes 25 stations: eleven along the Sentul Timur common line, and seven each along the Ampang Branch Line and the Sri Petaling Branch Line. The service depot and primary train depot is at Ampang. There is a secondary train depot at Sri Petaling.
Unlike previous railway lines in Malaysia, which were built to metre gauge, the Ampang Line was the first railway system in the country to adopt standard gauge. Between Ampang and Plaza Rakyat and between Chan Sow Lin and Salak Selatan, the line uses the trackbed of previously disused lines that were part of the Malayan Railway network (Ampang/Sultan Street branch), closed in the 1960s (between the present Chan Sow Lin station and the present Plaza Rakyat) and the early 1990s (the remaining portion of the line). The Ampang depot stands on the site of the former Ampang railway station.
Ridership on the line has been far below expectations. Built with a capacity of 500,000 passengers per day and a breakeven point of 170,000 passengers per day, in 1998, two years after launch, the line was averaging only 53,000 passengers per day, in part because of fares perceived as too high. In 2002, STAR LRT was taken over by the government-owned Syarikat Prasarana Negara Berhad. By 2003, the ridership had increased to 110,000, still insufficient for profitability.
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