I refer to the letter Traffic jams affecting productivity .

Indeed, like Mohana Priya, I was thinking about how traffic jams adversely affect productivity last Saturday afternoon when I was caught in a jam for about half an hour heading along Jalan Semangat towards the Rothmans roundabout in Petaling Jaya. The stress of navigating such jams, especially during morning or evening rush hour, is very tiring.

To some extent, the fault is due to the attitude of drivers who tend to turn left from the lane meant for going straight, thus causing congestion, such as at the exit off the Federal Highway near Mid-Valley Megamall. But I'd sooner blame the bad road planing of the past state and federal Barisan Nasional governments, its ministries and agencies.

Firstly, that exit next to Mid-Valley is a major exit leading to Taman Desa, the Seremban Highway and onwards to Cheras, etc and there simply aren't enough lanes to support the volume of traffic taking that exit during peak hours.

Next, there are the many additional entries and exits along the Federal Highway, such as the tolled Pencala Link, etc which create congestion, especially as vehicles join or leave the highway.

My Rothmans roundabout experience on that Saturday afternoon was due to an antiquated roundabout still being used when traffic volume has far exceeded its capacity at peak periods, with vehicles pushing into the roundabout and struggling to get off.

Faced with such a situation where people have to get to work on time or to an appointment in time, what more can one expect of them except to push the envelope and break the highway code? And that eventually becomes a bad driving habit for which the Barisan Nasional government is ultimately responsible.

I find it laughable that there are electronic signboards over the roads telling us where traffic congestion is and up until where but the authorities don't even lift a finger to help ease it.

That's one of the useless implementations of information technology as a cheap substitute for taking concrete action on the ground and it reminds me of self-interested videoconferencing systems vendors touting their systems as solutions to the ‘horrendous traffic jams’.

I also suppose congested roads are good excuse to let cronies build tolled highways and make money out of the public's misery.

Anyway, now that the Pakatan Rakyat is in power in the five states, I hope the respective governments of these states will do their best to ease the suffering due to traffic jams.