City folk caught in heavy jams after long weekend break

PETALING JAYA: Motorists travelling back to the city inched through congested roads as urban dwellers returned from their hometowns after the long weekend break.

Although the mid-term school break had also started, traffic on major highways heading back into the city reportedly became busy from 11am yesterday.

PLUS Expressway Bhd (PLUS) head of operations excellence Yusuf Abdul Aziz said the slow moving traffic continued until late evening.

“Traffic built up along highways and at toll plazas entering the city before noon. In general, traffic on the highway was generally slow moving, ” he said.

For southbound travellers, he said traffic was slow moving at Changkat Jering, Menora Tunnel, the Ipoh to Simpang Pulai layby, Gua Tempurung, Tapah, Bidor, Sungkai and Slim River.

For those heading into the capital, there was congestion from Bukit Tagar to Rawang, as well as from Ayer Keroh, Pedas and Linggi to Seremban.

Yusuf noted that a fatal accident involving a heavy vehicle at the 11th kilometre of the North Klang Valley Expressway at 2.40am yesterday also disrupted travel time as rescue and clearing took place throughout the day.

Although no travel advisory was implemented for this festive break, he said motorists were utilising services provided by PLUS’ traffic monitoring centre and social media channels for the latest traffic info.

“PLUS expected a 20% increase in traffic for this festive season compared to the 1.7 million vehicles on normal days.

“We also increased staff strength by 30%, apart from ensuring that all lanes were in working condition to avoid delays, ” he said.

Yusuf added that travellers should always ensure sufficient balance in their Touch’n’Go cards as top up service was not available when exiting PLUS toll booths.

Meanwhile, to ensure smoother traffic, Prolintas temporarily confined motorcycles to their dedicated lanes of the Guthrie Corridor Expressway from 6am to 11pm yesterday.As of 7pm, Twitter updates from the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) showed that traffic flow on the East Coast Highway (LPT) 1 and 2 in both directions was reported to be smooth.

The latest traffic information is available on Plusline at 1-800-88-0000 (toll-free) and Twitter (@plustrafik) or from LLM at 1-800-88-7752 or on Twitter @llminfotrafik.

Source: TheStar