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Malaysia used to pride itself on having some of the best highways and expressways in the world. What exactly that means is anybody’s guess. But for many of us who live in and around the urban capital of Malaysia, the Klang Valley, we equate most highways with traffic jams.

Admittedly not all highways experience bad traffic crawls, but there are more than a few that are notoriously bad on a daily basis, in particular the NKVE, LDP, NPE, Federal Highway, Kesas, parts of Elite, and parts of many other highways.

All those notoriously congested highways are tolled highways. Motorists pay to use them. The purpose of these tolled highways is to provide faster, more convenient routes for motorists. But that has not been the case for as long as most of us who use these highways can remember. These tolled highways have for the most part, also robbed motorists of viable alternative un-tolled routes.

It is bad enough that we have to pay to be stuck in bad traffic jams, but we do not have any congested alternatives that are free either! It is a monopoly of traffic jams!

I am glad that the Selangor government has refused to approve the construction of Kidex. It is yet another tolled highway that is designed to offload traffic from an existing tolled highway, the LDP. The LDP was supposed to provide hassle-free journeys for the duration of its concession, yet almost as soon as it went into operation, it got choked up.

Now the Federal government is esentially providing LDP 2.0 to fix the problems of LDP 1.0. The problem here is that LDP 2.0 does not offer any significant changes to how LDP 1.0 operates and therefore runs the risk of being equally as congested over time. Highway insanity this is, by building the same type of highway over and over again and expecting different results. We need to change the way our highways operate in order to effectively alleviate the congestion on it.

A highway by itself does not solve traffic jams. A cleverly designed one would. Before we begin looking at building new highways to solve an old problem, let’s first look at the existing highways and how it can be revamped to render it more efficient in dispersing traffic.

A critical bottleneck is often found at the toll plazas. This is the case especially for the NKVE (Damansara toll) and the LDP (PJ Selatan toll). The double-funnel design where two lanes expand into 10 or more booths and upon exiting reduces back to two lanes inadvertently creates a bottleneck. Such a design works for relatively low-volume traffic but is disastrous for high-volume.

The need for multiple booths is due to the type of toll collection that is employed. Cash being the slowest form of collection, followed by Touch ‘n Go which is a contact-based system requiring motorists to touch a physical card onto a scanner, and SmartTag which requires motorists to slow down for a scanner to read a device holding the Touch ‘n Go card.

These systems do not allow for free-flowing traffic and as such, multiple booths are required in order to process more vehicles simultaneously. But traffic is slowed down and often comes to a standstill at the toll plazas due to the compounded delay time in passing the toll booths and the backlog caused by the bottleneck after the toll plaza.

Adequate interchanges?

But the toll plazas by itself is not the problem. Often times, traffic is simply heavily concentrated at the interchanges. Why is that? Do the highways have adequate interchanges?

  • Between the Subang and Damansara toll plazas (a stretch of 4km) on the NKVE, there are zero interchanges/exits.
  • Between the Damansara and Kota Damansara toll plazas (a stretch of 6km), there are zero interchanges/exits.
  • Between the Kota Damansara and Jalan Duta toll plazas (a stretch of 18km), there is one interchange which is onto the North-South Expressway, but no exits.
And these are the heaviest congested stretches of the NKVE. Why aren’t there more interchanges and exits? One answer could very well be that the distances between these toll plazas are relatively short. But why is that a valid technical reason? Because it would require a great deal of investment and land space to build more toll plazas.

Now what if users simply pay a fixed rate at the existing toll plazas without the need to build new toll plazas? That means a change in the toll collection system from a closed system which is in use now on the NKVE where users only pay for the distance travelled, to an open system where users pay a fixed amount at the toll irrespective of the distance travelled, much like the Federal Highway or the LDP. That could very well be a possible solution.

Build more interchanges or simply, exits on the NKVE, especially along the most congested stretches of the highway. This may require the building of another toll plaza to separate it from the North-South Expressway, but if that’s what it takes, that’s what should be done.

An urban/city highway should not share the same toll collection system as an inter-state highway. An urban highway by nature is a quick get-on/get-off route, and not a long distance route like an inter-state which requires fewer interchanges.

The highway concessionaires have always been hesitant in allowing for ‘punctures’ on their highways for fear of losing revenue. But it is an open secret that none of the highway concessionaires will ever make a loss over the concession period. The terms of the concessions are structured in a way that it almost guarantees a handsome profit for the highway operators.

The federal government is now claiming that after the cancellation of Kidex by the Selangor state government, they are at a loss as to viable alternatives. Please explain to us, in this case, why more exits and interchanges cannot be built for the NKVE in order to alleviate its current congestion.

We are aware that a multi-lane free flow toll collection system, much like the gantry system in Singapore, is pending implementation and is long delayed, and may provide a solution by itself, but as we improve the toll collection system, let’s first improve the connectivity of the present highways.

If the federal government is willing to build elevated highways that cut through large swathes of populated Petaling Jaya, it should be more than ready to build more interchanges and exits (elevated or otherwise) on the Plus-operated NKVE.


RAMACHANDRAN M tweets as @ramachandran_m. He believes in no taxation without representation, and no toll-collection with traffic jams.

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