The upcoming Maulidur Rasul public holiday falls on Monday (October 10), which means that the long weekend will often result in longer travelling times as cars are expected to fill the roads.
According to BERNAMA, PLUS Malaysia Berhad (PLUS) recently advised motorists to carefully plan their journey and to expect longer travelling times during the public holiday as 1.9 million vehicles are expected to fill the highways each day from Friday till Monday.
PLUS Head of Operations Excellence, Mohd Yusuf Abdul Aziz said that PLUS has recorded daily traffic volumes of an average of 1.7 million vehicles since moving to the endemic phase and the trend had shown spikes of 1.9 million vehicles before each weekend.
“We expect with more travellers taking advantage of the three day weekend, traffic will be higher and a longer journey can be expected. Therefore, we advise highway customers to be prepared and ensure their vehicles are fit for a longer drive this weekend.”
What’s the long term solution to this?
Meanwhile, the announcement by PLUS did not go down too well with fellow Malaysians who criticised them as well as the government for appearing to not do anything to solve the pending issue of road congestions during long weekends.
“Plan ahead of time. What kind of statement is that? Of course everyone would be planning to go home because it’s a long holiday.”
A user commented, “Malaysians spend so much time stuck in traffic congestion, if only there are reliable rail services.”
Meanwhile, some users placed the blame onto the operators and said that they have obviously failed to provide the necessary services needed to facilitate traffic flows every holiday season.
“The only thing they did well is passing the bucket back to the road users without feeling guilty.”
“Clearly the highway capacity has been exceeded. Time to put the toll money to expand the highway lanes and ease traffic flow,” said another user.
What do you think? What’s the solution to ensure that this could be avoided?
Also read: Multi-Lane Free Flow Toll System will be Implemented on M’sian Highways by 2025 To Ease Traffic
