Of Course We Boleh!

So, did you get stuck in the massive, massive, massive peak hour traffic jam Friday morning? Oh, yes, the powers that be, felt it necessary to block of at least 5 km of two major suburban highways and an arterial road at 815 am. All to make way for thirty-something cyclists.


But what are the doing in KL and PJ? They're supposed to be in Langkawi anyways! Ish!



We heard an announcement on the radio the day before, warning that the Sprint Highway, a road in Taman Tun and the LDP will be affected. So we checked the website of the supposedly state-of-the-art transport information system. I expected up-to-date information, showing detailed route of the "cycling tour" and roads affected in fancy colourful maps. Instead, we were provided with a pathetic badly scanned google earth image ... showing only one small section of the route!

Hmm let's see, what was the impact of the 1.5 hour road closure?

- Traffic jam all over Petaling Jaya and surrounding areas, including roads and highways leading to Jln Damansara, Sprint Highway and LDP. The traffic even backlogged right up to the Bukit Jelutong interchange on the NKVE!

- The traffic at the Jln Abu Bakar-Sprint Highway intersection only cleared at 11am. That means almost 3 hours. What a waste of time for those poor motorists!

- Assuming a conservative 100,000 road users and commuters were affected that morning, meaning that up to 300,000 manhours lost. Convert that to ringgit, assuming an average rate of RM25/hour, RM7.5 million worth of useful work not done.

- What about important business meetings and deals?

Le tour boleh! The transport information system boleh! Malaysia boleh ma!

p/s: I was lucky I wasn't stuck in the jam.