Rush-Hour Crawl At LDP

For many who use the Damansara-Puchong Highway (LDP) to get to work and then return home, it is a daily ritual to crawl through the rush-hour traffic chaos.

The congestion can be unbearable at times, especially when there are inconsiderate and impatient motorists trying to cut queues.

The worst scenario is when there is an accident, whether major or minor, which could hold up traffic for quite some time.

The daily rush-hour traffic havoc is unavoidable as the LDP is at present the only North-South connection linking Sri Damansara in the north and Putrajaya in the south.

Work in progress: Upgrading works are under way at the Taman Tun Dr Ismail interchange in a bid to reduce congestion in the area which is plied by some 110,000 vehicles daily.

When the LDP was completed in 1999, the only other highways in place were the Federal Highway and the New Klang Valley Expressway (NKVE). The MRR2 was then still under construction.

According to private traffic planning consultant Goh Bok Yen, the entire LDP corridor was originally designed with alignment identified during the 90s, and from that period till now, developments had been rapid and vibrant.

“The LDP is an early highway, among the second batch that was built after the North-South Expressway,” Goh said.

“The important characteristic of the LDP is that it is built through the expansion and widening of an existing road where the old alignment was already there,” he said.

“Certain sections are already in built-up areas along Petaling Jaya till Sunway (which was then PJ South), so it is no surprise this stretch is often congested,” Goh said.

“Hence, there are physical constraints in the interchanges, taking into account matters like land and property acquisition. The corridor’s design is itself constrained by the existing alignment,” he said.

Goh recalled how Damansara Intan used to be a cowboy town in the 90s, and further up north then, was a quarry.

Over at the Puchong side, cattle rearing used to be a common sight which has been replaced by massive developments on both sides.

Goh said that while the IOI Mall was already there before the LDP was built, many intersections had also appeared in Puchong over the years.

“There is the problem of timing, where land owners are bringing forward their development projects now after the plans were approved earlier,” he said.

“Many development projects are fronting the LDP as everyone wanted to cash in on it as the main artery and disposal road,” Goh said.

“The interchanges, meanwhile, are messy and too close for comfort, which is the start of the problems,” he said.

“But I would like to think that the LDP has stimulated the growth of these development projects, especially in Puchong, with developers and land owners bringing forward their construction plans,” Goh said.

“Before the LDP was built, few would want to go to Serdang or the Equine Park,” he said.

Too many developments: In recent years, the mushrooming of many developments along the LDP have contributed to traffic congestion on the road, and one of the many is this way heading to Bandar Utama.

According to Lingkaran Trans Kota Sdn Bhd (Litrak) chief executive officer Sazally Saidi, while there has been an expansion in the highway networks over the years, such as the Sprint Penchala Link, Sprint Damansara Link, MRR2, NPE and the Kesas highway, all of them connect routes on the East-West direction.

He pointed out that till now, there are no other North-South links to serve traffic movement in this direction.

Goh agreed with the observation, saying that vehicles on the East-West link do make use of the LDP to get onto the next East-West highway.

Sazally said that when LDP was first opened in 1999, there were already 169 junctions (ingress and egress) along the 40km stretch of the road, but the number has increased to 180 today with new junctions coming up.

“Ideally, for urban highways like the LDP, the intersections should be between 2km to 3km apart but we have junctions every other 400m. At the inter-city highways like the PLUS expressway, the intersections are 20km apart,” he said.

Sazally said that although the LDP had been built with a big traffic volume in mind, big-scale developments were not identified during the early days, and there had been little improvement to the existing infrastructure.

Since 1999, some 66 projects had been developed, with 37 of them major ones on sites of more than 405ha or involving 500 residential or commercial units.

According to Sazally, each day, nearly 400,000 vehicles pass through four Litrak toll plazas and about a million vehicles travel on the toll-free section of the PJ stretch from Sunway to Bandar Utama.

Goh, meanwhile, said that some of the ingress and egress identified by Litrak were perhaps minor, such as like those going into petrol stations.

He said that while Litrak had foreseen the burgeoning of population, it probably did not anticipate the current density.

He said there was a serious lack of coordination between the relevant parties, like Malaysian Highway Authority (MHA) and the local authorities.

“The local authorities usually do not make long-term plans, although they should, including planning relief roads parallel on both left and right sides to cater to what is termed as intra traffic,” Goh said.

“A good example is in Kinrara, which I learnt that the council has done a study back then,” he said.

Goh said the LDP was meant to cater to inter-settlement traffic but now it was also accommodating intra traffic.

A crawl: Motorists on the LDP route heading towards Damansara Utama and Bandar Utama moving slowly, a scenario that can be seen almost every other day especially during peak hours.

He said this had mixed up the road hierarchy where relief roads were not enough.

“The local traffic can actually be separated, like what we see in Puchong, where the service roads run parallel,” Goh said.

“It is no point to keep improving the highways while the councils keep approving. It won’t do any good by adding on to a highway which results in it being unable to function to its capacity,” he said.

Sazally said that on Litrak’s part, it had spent RM400mil to enhance and upgrade the road network like the building of new interchanges.

“The company completed six interchanges in 2004, and is spending RM300mil over the next three years to develop the road network, including the currently ongoing TTDI interchange,” he said.

“Litrak has also expanded the capacity at its toll plazas and increased the number of Smart Tag and Touch N Go lanes,” Sazally said.

Goh, however, said that the toll booth capacity was not in balance with the highway capacity currently.

“More electronic usage is needed, which can be done by making the Smart Tag cheaper to encourage people to use it,” he said.

“This will also benefit the company as its toll booth capacity can be increased,” Goh said.

Another point of contention is the same old story of the poor state of the public transportation.

Goh said that despite years of talk about the need for an adequate, effective and efficient public transportation system, even the basic requirements had not been improved to reduce usage of private vehicles on the roads.

Source: The Star