KenaSaman.com

IT was supposed to be a simple road trip to Malacca over the weekend during the school holidays last month, but everyone warned me that the roads would be jammed with holiday-makers, especially those from Singapore.

We left the Klang Valley at 8am and made it to Malacca by 10.30am, including a stop for breakfast at Seremban, and that did not prepare me for what was to come.

The historical city did gradually become congested with people and cars over that weekend but it was still tolerable.

Maybe it was because policemen were out in force and the much-maligned one-way traffic system actually worked.

So we were really taken aback that our return journey, which started at about 4pm, turned into a horror crawl of about six hours.

The traffic snarl started the moment we hit Melaka Sentral and from there, it took a good 3½ hours to get to Seremban.

At one stage, it looked like the North-South Expressway (NSE) was no more than just a giant parking lot because no one north-bound was moving.

We had no choice but to take a break in Seremban and had dinner as it was almost 8pm. We resumed our journey at 10pm. On the NSE, the headlights of the vehicles on both sides lit up the night sky, as though it was a dragon dance parade.

Except that this was a flotilla of angry people stuck in a jam that was barely going at 40kph on an expressway that had a speed limit of 110kph.

As I related this sorry tale to friends and relatives, I was surprised at the lack of sympathy from them. While half of them said we deserved it for attempting such a road trip during the school holidays, the others said it was normal for a Sunday evening.

According to them, traffic from the south to the Klang Valley is always heavy on Sunday evenings and that the crawl would start from Alor Gajah until past Nilai – a 90km journey. I just cannot help but imagine that being the largest parking lot in the world.

However, my friends from the north said the situation is similar from Sungai Perak all the way to Slim River, although it has improved tremendously since the removal of the Jelapang toll near Ipoh.

While talking to people on this matter, a former classmate pointed out that there was a new highway between Kuala Lumpur and Serem­ban, and there was hardly any traffic on it.

So we tried this three-lane expressway, with the acronym Lekas (Lebuhraya Kajang-Seremban), over the past two weeks. The first time we did this was when we were returning from Seremban in the evening. We enjoyed the view tremendously because the highway was built on the hills overlooking the Klang Valley.

However, after getting into Kajang district, we got thoroughly lost when the skies got dark. The road signs were bad and unlike the NSE, most of Lekas was unlit.

In the end, we ended up in Cheras and it was a crawl all the way home to Subang Jaya. It would seem that Lekas was not very quick either.

Not satisfied, we tried the same route last week, leaving my hometown at 3pm to ensure that there was enough daylight in case we got lost. The entire journey back to Subang Jaya took less than an hour but felt a lot longer than our usual drive on the NSE. The trip meter indicated it was about 15km more.

So, there is a choice in case there is a massive traffic jam on the NSE, but I wonder how long it would be before other road-users discover this new route, especially after reading this article.

One could argue that this would disperse the traffic between the two expressways, thus reducing the number of vehicles, but that does not seem to be the case, especially if you are a Subang Jaya resident.

About 15 years ago, we used to be the butt of everyone’s joke as we had to crawl our way out of the area to join the Federal Highway – and the jam – on our way to work daily because there was only one entry and one exit point.

Today, Subang Jaya is a municipal council and is among the richest in the country with no less than four expressways (NPE, Kesas, LDP and the good old Federal Highway) and an elevated highway to enter and exit.

You know what? It is still a nightmare for those leaving for work or school during peak hours. This is because residents from other areas now cut through Subang Jaya to get to the same four expressways.

There never seems to be enough expressways to serve our needs. Did you know that there are 36 expressways in our country? Two more – the second Penang Bridge and the Johor Baru dispersal link – are under construction.

There are 10 more on the drawing board, with construction to begin under the 11th Malaysia Plan.

Among these are the Kuan- tan-Segamat-Muar-Highway, Kuala Lumpur Outer Ring Road (from Templer Park to Sungai Long) and the Paroi-Senawang-KLIA expressway.

The last, of course, is of particular interest to me, as it will create the third expressway alternative for my frequent Subang Jaya-Seremban trips. Why not a fourth alternative as traffic is always growing?

There must be more coordination between the different authorities – those planning the roads and those approving the sales of cars.

By the end of this year, there will be more than 20 million registered vehicles on the road as about a million vehicles are sold each year.

Read the full article:
http://thestar.com.my/columnists/story. ... =Why%20Not