Yesterday I was stuck on the 2nd link Causeway for 2.5 hours. What was supposed to be a quick trip to pick up a friend at Joo Koon MRT turned into 2.5 hours sauna trip (my car's aircon stopped working too) along the causeway. There were many many Singaporean families taking short vacations and driving to/through Johor. Hundreds of cars were lined up from 1 KM to Johor checkpoint. It took us over 2 hours to clear the 1 KM distance. I reached the causeway at 12 noon and only managed to arrive home at East Ledang at 2.35 pm. Our neighbour was also caught in the jam and it took them over 2 hours to clear the causeway jam as well. Lesson learnt: Be aware of school holidays schedule and not just public holidays. I found this site which is quite useful, hopefully you would not experience a 2 hours jam like we did :)
Happy Sunday!
Actually I also went to JB on that day (28/5). But I used Woodlands. I joined the queue at the end of BKE at around 1:45pm, and arrived the Shell station after Woodlands immigration at around 3:15pm. I think during these "peak days", using Woodlands maybe better than Tuas, as many Singaporeans may think Woodlands will be very congested and they may choose Tuas. I've another experience, the weekend just before Chinese New Year. I used Tuas to go to Bukit Indah. 3 hr !!! I do believe if I use Woodlands, maybe at most 2 hr or less.
ReplyDeleteLesson: I will use Woodlands during these peak days. Even if I really spent 3 hr in Woodlands, I do feel better (coz it's much cheaper!).
Thanks for sharing Liu. For us, Woodlands is too far because it would still take at least 40-45 minutes to get home to East Ledang. Lesson learn: try to leave for Johor before 8 am during peak holidays :)
ReplyDeleteHi Erika
ReplyDeleteYesterday (9th june 2013) my family and i drove out to the gelang patah malaysia checkpoint and were utterly shock to see the horrendous traffic jam at 4pm. This was a kill joy for us as we were looking forward to visiting relatives. My husband in return took over the wheel from me and did the cut ins and out and managed to get to the checkpoint in 30 minutes. When we reached one of lanes we noticed that only 2 booths were operating on our left and our lane 3 booths only. This is frustrating. The jam was caused by the shortage of staff of the malaysian immigration. I hope something will be done soon to rectify this inefficiency of the malaysian immigration department soon.
Hi Kornelia, thanks for reading my blog and for sharing your experience. There are days of bad traffic, Sundays are usually OK and Saturdays are the worst. The traffic I tend to experience is actually at Singapore checkpoints on weekdays early morning (6.30 - 7 am), caused mostly by lack of counter booth being opened, thousands of motorcycles in the queue and inconsiderate car drivers taking shortcuts forming 4-5 lanes. Hopefully both side of the checkpoints do something to further improve their immigration processes.
DeleteCheers,
Erika