Saturday November 21, 2009

Continuous rain gives Klang folk the blues

By CHRISTINA TAN
PHOTOS BY K K SHAM

THE incessant rain over the past few days has damaged certain parts of the road along the Klang end of the Federal Highway. And this has resulted in massive traffic jams along busy stretches in the royal town, especially during peak hours.

The Klang end of the Federal Highway is partly closed to traffic for upgrading work to build a flyover to ease traffic congestion.

The closure of the 600m stretch from Bulatan 100 to the Kota Bridge started in May last year and is scheduled to be completed next month.

Potholes everywhere: Construction of the flyover is expected to be completed next month.

Both stretches along Persiaran Sultan Ibrahim leading in and out of the town are riddled with potholes, causing an already slow traffic to move even slower.

It resulted in meandering queues of vehicles around the construction site and it often takes motorists more than an hour to go through the stretches, which is less than 1km.

Klang Municipal Council (MPK) councillor Yew Boon Lye said the situation was worse during evening rush hours and many motorists had complained that they would get stuck in traffic for more than two hours.

“It is a pain going through the town and we hope the Works Department and the contractor could patch up the potholes immediately,” Yee said yesterday during a meeting with the official of Spaz Sdn Bhd, the contractor, and several MPK councillors to discuss the road congestion problem.

Traffic management officer of Spaz Husnan Abd Latif said non-stop rain had damaged the roads along the construction site.

Sickening: Motorists going in and out of Klang are stuck in a massive crawl due to the damaged roads.

“We repair the roads when potholes emerge, but the holes will surface again on the same spot just a day after patching up because of the rain,” he said.

Husnan said the contractor could not close the roads completely to repair, as the stretches were busy all the time with traffic volume up to 245,000 per day.

Husnan assured motorists that they would repair the roads as soon as possible.