Traffic Congestion In The Making

It is a pleasure to put up some of our residents' articles. This one here came from Albert and thanks very much.

Hi Jimmy,

I am staying in Pearl Garden. Recently, I have came across a news in local chinese newspaper which I think would affect all of us including Sungai Ara residents. Sorry for the chiong hei (long winded) email. This is more or less the content of the news.

25th Oct 09

To ease the heavy traffic in the Bayan Lepas old town road, the Penang JKR department will open a new

interchange road called Jalan Kampung Bukit, which will divert the traffic from Teluk Kumbar to Sungai Ara. It

means that for those residents staying in Teluk Kumbar who would like to go to the town area, they will have to turn left at the traffic light into Jalan Kampung Bukit where Taman Sri Bayu apartment is located, instead of passing through the Bayan Lepas old town area.

The Jalan Kampung Bukit road will eventually merge to the Jalan Dato Ismail Hashim where the resident from Teluk Kumbar will pass through the traffic light infront of the SP Setia, cemetry, Pearl Garden, Chung Cheng Primary School to go to Georgetown.

Currently the new Jalan Kampung Bukit road is still not open to the public yet as the JKR is still waiting for the traffic flow report. After the new road is opened, the JKR will change the Bayan Lepas old town road to one way. It means that for those who wants to go to Teluk Kumbar from Bayan Baru, they can still pass through the Bayan Lepas old town road. But not of the opposite direction. This news is reported in the Kwong Wah Jit Poh dated 25th Oct 09.

Fyi, the new interchange road will be opened next month. Please refer to the original news reported at this link, http://www.kwongwah.com.my/news/2009/10/25/2.html

As the resident of Pearl Garden and Sungai Ara as a whole, I personally think that this arrangement or "patch

solution" is going to create heavy traffic congestion along Jalan Dato' Ismail Hashim. Every morning and

evening during peak hours, the traffic flow in Sungai Ara is almost unbearable.

We will have to bear with heavy jam in the traffic light located in front of Chong Cheng Primary School and the traffic light at the cross road of Jalan Data Ismail Hashim and Jalan Tun Dr Awang. What the local authorities are trying to do is to move the traffic congestion problem from one place to another.

This will not solve the traffic problem but at the same time creating a bigger pile up along Jalan Dato Ismail Hashim which is already having problem coping with the increasing traffic. With such heavy traffic congestion, Sungai Ara property price will definitely be affected.

Currently, we are having difficulty trying to cross the road opposite of Pearl Garden (Jalan Dato Ismail

Hashim) due to heavy traffic from Setia Pearl Island direction. I could not imagine how the situation will be

if the road is used for those traffic from Teluk Kumbar as well.

Do you have any channel for us to complain/feedback to the local authority in order for them to find a better

solution?

I guess they will have to come to Sungai Ara during peak hour to realize that the traffic condition in Sungai Ara is no better than Teluk Kumbar and it might be worst.

I could think of a simpler solution. Instead of directing the traffic along Jalan Dato Ismail Hashim, the traffic could be directed to Jalan Makamah. From Jalan Makamah, the road user will be able to turn to Jalan Tun Dr Awang. In fact, the road user could access back to Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah but that would require them to make an illegal U-Turn at the roundabout near the airport.

If the Local authority could allow traffic to flow to the roundabout, the condition will be much better. Please refer to the image Map.jpg for the alternative route that I mentioned. Apologize for the poor description. The road that was proposed by JKR is showed in cyan and green arrow. The alternative route that I thought of is rounded as blue.

Albert