Vehicles jam up roads

PETALING JAYA: With the Hari Raya holidays over, major highways leading to the Klang Valley were congested with vehicles as people made their way home.

Checks on the North-South Expressway, Kuala Lumpur-Karak Highway and East Coast Expressway revealed that traffic was reduced to a crawl by yesterday afternoon.

Many road users also called The Star complaining about being stuck in jams for as long as three hours on the KL-Karak Highway. An official manning the North-South Expressway’s helpline said traffic flow between the Senawang interchange and the Seremban rest area was congested from 3pm.

In the northern portion of the expressway, traffic started building up from 1pm and was bumper-to-bumper from Gopeng to Slim River.

Now, a long crawl home: Vehicles inching their way back to Kuala Lumpur from the east coast states on the Kuala Lumpur-Karak Highway at the Bentong toll plaza in Pahang Sunday. Traffic was also heavy on the North-South Expressway with people heading back to the Klang Valley after the Hari Raya break.

The volume of vehicles from the north began dropping after 9.45pm, the official said.

“The traffic flow could have been better if users had followed our travel-time advisory,” the official said.

He said that unlike the balik kampung rush at the start of the Hari Raya festive season which was spread out, many travellers decided to return to the Klang Valley at the last minute causing major congestion.

An MTD Primeline helpline official said a 10km crawl back to the Klang Valley along the Kuala Lumpur-Karak Highway started at 6pm from Bentong.