Surprise, surprise! The road was blocked due to modification of the road with the entrance pushed backed earlier at IPC/Curve shopping mall rather than below the underpass.
I believed many were caught unaware too as there was no way to make any U turn except to head out all the way, pay the road toll, to Sri Damansara Kepong and U turn from there.
Impassible! The route was so congested I tried to find alternate route and ended up in Taman Ehsan which was just as seriously bad. No choice now but to dial in to office to report late.
I tried to make the best of it by calling up a customer but he was not in yet and possibly won't be able to make it in due to the massive jam.
So no choice, but to drag through the slow parade out of this area. Halfway, I decided to take a break because there is no way I would be able to break through the traffic jam dreadnought. Might be better to wait it out a little. After all, I was already late to work and no amount of rushing and ploughing through the traffic would give me a good clock in record.
Better to rest first before continuing with the dastardly traffic snarl. At least at the Mamak restaurant I could still browse through my mail a bit in my rooted HTC Cha Cha mobile phone.
I guess some days just didn't go according to the usual plan but life is such that it may throw you a curve ball and you do the best you can with the cards laid out. Thinking out there may be others who would be in a more dire predicament than I was so perhaps thanks to the Lord for giving me chance for an early morning break before work proper starts.
[update 3/4/12]
I scouted out the new route of Damansara Perdana Penchala Link the previous night determine to avoid the fiasco of getting stuck in Kepong. It looked very messy with many forks very similar to the Kenchala link exchange. One must be very careful to observe the signage or you may miss your road. It was good to scout out the roads the night before without all the rush hour traffic. So this morning it was a smooth drive for me driving to the correct road to make my U turn to LDP back to Petaling Jaya.
Many were still not quite familiar and I saw one car trying to reverse back out of a lane that he drove in by mistake. Many commuters drove slowly just to make sure they were in the right path.
If one is driving out from Persiaran Surian / IPC, you would be forced to enter the Damansara Perdana Penchala Link spaghetti interchange. I think even when you are familiar with the new interchange you still need to be careful to avoid entering into the wrong lane.
[Update: 25/4/2012]
More changes - New tunnel in Bandar Utama / Taman Tun Dr Ismail (TTDI) / LDP to Kepong
There is a new tunnel underpass from TTDI to Bandar Utama heading to Kepong. It cuts under the LDP overpass thus avoiding the need for traffic lights which really slows down the traffic during rush hour. At the same time for those heading out from Bandar Utama they will have speedier commute when heading to KL via TTDI and one less waiting time in the morning when heading to PJ (well they place road cones to prevent Bandar Utama residents from crossing over to LDP and forced them to use the traffic light junction but make a hell of a massive jam during the morning rush hour which forced me to use the Mutiara Damansara / Damansara Perdana U-turn to head back to PJ via LDP).
With the new tunnel underpass I could see the traffic in the morning from Bandar Utama to TTDI becoming very smooth going though I have yet to try it. I think I shall give it go because the new road to Damansara Perdana is so badly designed it is causing a minor congestion when trying to enter the new access road to Penchala Link / Mutiara Damansara Perdana. They should provide dual lane in rather than a single lane entry access causing a choking bottleneck. And the road system within this inner lane is also very confusing criss-crossing one another between the flyover pass to Penchala Link and the side road to the housing and LDP.
The tunnel link from TTDI is also confusing too, though the entry is a little more straight forward. However after exiting from the tunnel, again there are various barriers forcing the commuters to choose carefully between going to Bandar Utama or joining back to LDP to head out to Kepong / Sg Buloh.
What a mess!
Sure we need smooth traffic flow during rush hour to avoid getting high blood pressure from the driving stress, although we may get somewhat smoother drive, now we get mental gynastics too as we have to watch out very carefully which road to take to enter which area! Well, actually thinking harder does stave off dementia and Alzheimer but that's not the point.
This reminds me of the Kerinchi Link going to PJ and Mont Kiara, even though I have used it many times, I still have to watch the sign boards very carefully to avoid entering the wrong lane and ending up in the wrong destination.
Tsk! Such is the messy road system in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya!
[update 30/4/2012]
The new roads around Bandar Utama is quite a mess now prompting 1-Utama to send out newsletter with a map to indicate one should travel to get into 1-Utama shopping mall.
Entry to TV3, old wing of 1-Utama Shopping Mall
If you are coming from Petaling Jaya direction on LDP highway, you should keep left and enter the traffic light junction.
Entry to 1-Utama new wing
Also from the direction of PJ via LDP, use the overhead flyover, when approaching the junction of Persiaran Surian heading to Kota Damansara, keep left to enter.
From KL via TTDI tunnel link
Here you got 2 choices, after exiting the tunnel you can keep left to enter the old wing or keep right to join back to LDP then keep left to Persiaran Surian to go to 1-Utama new wing.
All the barriers makes it rather confusing to drive around. This gives you the "You can see your destination but you can't seem to get there" situation. It was suppose help ease congestion during the peak rush hour period. Well it helped to a certain extend and also created new problem at the same time. I wonder whoever designed it must have a PHD in road design, because driving through it, you need a PHD to negotiate the many road entries and exits. That makes "PHD" an acronym for Permanent Head Damage! Haha!
Bad Traffic Light Management at TTDI / Damansara / LDP interchage
[update 6/Feb/2013]
After the tunnel construction from TTDI heading to Bandar Utama / Sri Damansara / Kepong, the morning traffic from Bandar Utama to TTDI should be smoother right? Initially it was, until some stupid town planners (clown planners?) or traffic management decided to add another road with traffic lights from TTDI to Bandar Utama. Now why do they need to do that? With tunnel, such traffic lights at the intersection was redundant. By adding the traffic light, the morning rush hour from Bandar Utama became severely congested once again due to the longer waiting time.
Coupled with cones set up in the morning to prevent residents from joining up directly to LDP highway and forcing them to use the traffic light junction. Means motorist from Kepong Sri Damansara side will cause congestion when they want to turn in to TTDI, but no chance for Bandar Utama residents to escape out from the bad traffic light system at the underpass.
LDP traffic management was so hardworking to set up the cones road divider every morning, why don't put another personnel at the traffic light junction to manage the traffic flow too? The number of cars that want to head to Petaling Jaya and TTDI is higher than those wanting to head to Bandar Utama, so having a personnel to redirect the traffic would have been a better idea if they still want to insist on using cones to prevent cars from joining up with the LDP traffic.
Once the road jams up, many of us get frustrated and try to push through the cones to escape the stupidity of the road management design. I guess only in Malaysia idiocy rules.
More congestion from MRT construction
[update 8/9/2013]Although finally the government decided to construct the new MRT trains was certainly welcomed given that the Klang Valley public transport system was so poor. However the way they go about constructing it certainly gives the motorist a hard time especially in the morning rush hour.
I have two choices when rushing out to work.
1) Join the single lane bottleneck created by the badly planned MRT construction method
2) Make a big U-turn by way of Damansara Perdana Penchala Link-TTDI
Since method (1) route was blocked by the cones placed to ease the Sri Damansara traffic congestion, the bottleneck created by the MRT construction forced 3 lanes into 1. The crawl was extremely slow and the frustrated has one alternative and that was to cut out via the cones. Rather dangerous but necessary in order to beat the punch in dateline of clocking in to office.
As for method (2) the U-turn was rather long. Either use the traffic light junction of Damansara Perdana but this was also very congested as the motorist from Kota Damansara were forced to use this way to head towards Kepong, or head out via Penchala link and use the TTDI junction to turn back to LDP. This route takes about 10-12 minutes to clear out the stretch of those cone placement opposite TV3. This may be safer but time consuming but still beats the timing of the MRT construction bottleneck.
Driving around 1 Utama congestion was quite a nightmare. I suppose it would not be as hellish as driving around in downtown KL rush hour traffic.
Just the other day, I picked up a visitor from KLIA airport and proceeded to take him to Royale Bintang at e-Curve during the evening Friday rush hour traffic. It took me a whopping 2 hours drive, a doubling of on-the-road driving time. After dropping him off, I was rather tired and didn't want to face the congested drive home and decided to wait it out at the shopping mall.
Such was headache of driving around during jam time in PJ!
No comments:
Post a Comment