Sunday, June 5, 2011

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.
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6 comments:

  1. LiuJune 5, 2011 at 12:33 PM

    Hi Erika,

    Do you know how about the traffic in the morning for the Johor->Singapore side and in the evening for the opposite direction in the Tuas immigration after this biometric system has been used in June?

    Joseph

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownJune 5, 2011 at 8:37 PM

    Hi Liu,

    Actually the biometric system has been in place since May. We've done the fingerprints once and so far we did not encounter any delays. It is only since this is also rolled out to tourists on 1st June that we're seeing so much delays. I'll be driving in and out of Singapore for work this week, so I'll keep you posted. I hope we will not see such terrible delays on weekdays. I just drove home from Singapore just now (7.30 pm) and I did not experience any delay. The queue was on the opposite site (heading back to Singapore).

    Good night,
    Erika

    ReplyDelete
  3. Choong WaiJune 6, 2011 at 10:29 AM

    http://www.onemotoring.com.sg/publish/onemotoring/en/on_the_roads/traffic_cameras0.html

    you can check the online traffic camera at this website.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownJune 6, 2011 at 10:31 PM

    Hi Choong Wai,

    Thanks for sharing. We also use the Traffic Cam iPhone app, but you won't be able to see the traffic on Johor 2nd Link site unfortunately.

    Cheers,
    Erika

    ReplyDelete
  5. MissJune 8, 2011 at 10:15 PM

    Hi Erika, I would love to talk to you about living in Malaysia and working in Singapore. How can I contact you? I am looking forward to hearing back from you soon :) Thanks, Sandra

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownJune 12, 2011 at 8:03 AM

    Hi Sandra,

    Thanks for reading my blog. You can email me at e_oktora@yahoo.com and we can follow up from there.

    Have a great Sunday!
    Erika

    ReplyDelete

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