Back to the city crawl to start tomorrow

PETALING JAYA: Traffic bound for Kuala Lumpur is expected to be very heavy tomorrow as motorists end their long Chinese New Year break.

Hundreds of thousands of people across Malaysia drove or biked to their hometowns over the weekend, and are expected to travel back when work resumes on Wednesday.

“Coming back to KL, it’s going to be hectic on Tuesday (tomorrow),” said Star Traffic team head Priscilla Patrick.

The North-South Expressway, East Coast Expressway and others were expected to be heavily congested then. The first and second day of CNY falls today and tomorrow.

She said many took advantage of the long weekend to travel out of the capital, adding that roads in most places were clear yesterday.

“It’s because today (Sunday) is reunion dinner. Everyone is where they’re supposed to be,” she said.

She advised people heading back to KL to either start their journeys at night today or very early tomorrow morning.

Any later than that people are going to get caught in some very heavy traffic, she said. “Tuesday will be interesting,” she added. The team also found that traffic in Singapore was also quite clear yesterday, and that many had already arrived in Malaysia.

Patrick expected the return crawl to spread on towards Singapore over the Causeway and the Second Link when the long break ends.

On traffic patterns, Patrick said the non-Chinese took advantage of the long break and travelled on Saturday to various holiday areas.

She observed that, coasts and beach areas such as Port Dickson, Penang’s Batu Feringghi and even parts of Langkawi were “very busy”.

For real-time traffic updates, you can check out these Twitter accounts at: @mytraffic, @plustrafik, @llminfotrafik and @lpttrafik.