Very bad traffic at Singapore Tuas checkpoint every day in past 2 weeks

Life's back at work has been quite tough, added by the stress of daily commute in past couple of weeks. Traffic is usually pent up all the way til end of 2nd link bridge in morning (7.50-9 am), which means it takes an average 50 minutes to 1 hour just to clear the bridge. Traffic leaving Singapore at 5.45-6pm is also bad with queuing time of average 30 minutes. Hence, daily travel time has been averaging 3.5 hours per day :(

Let's just hope that things will improve this week....argh!!!!

Have good Sunday everyone,
Erika

ICA confiscates over 4,000 cartons of cigarettes at Tuas Checkpoint

Wow - what was he thinking? Usually when things like this happen, we can see the custom officers checking Malaysian cars a lot more thoroughly. Let's hope that it won't impact the checkpoint clearance time in the morning.

ICA confiscates over 4,000 cartons of cigarettes

This is what it looks like with traffic @ checkpoint

Quick look at traffic jam on causeway heading into Johor's checkpoint during one of Chinese New Year's holidays. It took me 45 minutes to clear the Johor checkpoint....not as bad as the jam during fingerprint enforcement days (we were stuck for at least 2 hours).
Needless to say...a lot of kiasusm!

Chaos at Johor Checkpoints

Looks like the super unusual jam is not a once-off incident. We left for Singapore at 3 pm yesterday and the queue into Johor stretched all the way from Singapore Tuas side! I think those people would have at least queued for 4 hours to clear Johor immigration. To be safe, we decided to stay in Singapore and return to Johor very late (around 11 pm). To our shock, there's still a long queue at this hour in middle of the causeway (est. 2-3 km from Johor immigration)!

The implementation of biometric fingerprint scanning system in the middle of school holidays without any allowance/increase in immigration capacity is just sad.

In both Saturdays, despite the jam and queue, not all counters were even operating!

In this article, the Immigration Department director-general Datuk Alias Ahmad urged travellers to be patient with the new security system. Well, what about if you join us in experiencing being stuck and queueing on causeway for hours?

I hope this message is passed along. We understand the importance of this system, however, the government should at least better anticipate the impact of this and increase capacity at the checkpoints to counterbalance. If not, I cannot imagine how would Johor immigration would be able to manage the increased traffic next year when Legoland & other facilities are opened.

What do you think?

Jam at 3 pm all along causeway bridge:


6th June 2011 Update:

Today's travel back to Johor was very smooth. I left Tanjong Pagar at 6.26 pm and I reached home at 7.12 pm. There was not much queue at both Singapore and Johor checkpoints.