Monday, December 28, 2009

Jam of Plus North South Highway - Dec 27

It is school year end long holiday now, conjunction with the 3 days Christmas day long weekend holiday, I am expecting some traffic heavy load on PLUS north south highway when return to Penang on Dec 27 evening. As compared to Haji long weekend holiday, the traffic seems to be smoother at first, at least I didn't see any jam at Kuala Kangsar toll.

Five minutes later, sister whose driving towards south bound called me and said it started to jam somewhere near Sg Perak bridge. The average speed is around 20-30kmh. I told her for area before Kuala Kangsar, it seems to be better than Haji holiday, just around 8 km jam somewhere near Taiping, probably due to going up slope, as it was clear after that slope, and another few kilometers jam due to the heavy rain near Bukit Gantang. After Juru toll, there was around 3km of traffic queue entering toll plaza towards south bound. Besides too many car is entering the highway, 2 minor accidents contributing to the jam also. Both cases are the same, 'bumper kissing' case. My dear reader, I hope you always keep a safe distance of approximate 1 -2 car with the car in front of you and 3-4 car distance on the highway :). Tailgating is always not good. Another rule of thumb is, it will be high risk if you cannot see the front wheel of the car in front of you.

As for my trip towards north, this time there were two jam due to driving altitude. One is near Serdang of 10 km queue. I didn't see any accident or anything, most probably was due to a vehicle at fast lane driving at similar speed of the car in slow lane, which both of them are less than 80kmh. The later jam was of 8 km is caused by all car slowing down to look at what happened to the car stopping at emergency lane. Well, these are Malaysian driving altitude that need to be improved. Queue effect is yet to be taught, to make more driver realize that slowing down just to be busy body, can caused few kilometers jam at the back. This is very similar to the condition at Penang Bridge, where one side accident will caused both way to be jam, because of 'busy body' slowing down. This was then led to the high divider of Penang bridge, if you ever notice.

Oh before I ended, if you see lots of swallow on your way too, it's near the season :)

Happy driving.

2 comments:

skypaul said...

i experienced once and never want to try again. PLUS will become longest parking lot in the world during the peak season. better take flight.

mk said...

haha the moving parking queue.
not all place can be reach by flight, but that's a good options too :D