Deja vu. It has happened again. A horrendous traffic jam on Penang island caused by a stupid accident on the Penang bridge on Friday (24 Nov 2006). Only this time, unlike three years ago, I barely managed to avoid getting caught in the bridge jam.
Call it good providence if you want but one thing worked in my favour. I had taken a half-day’s leave from the office because I wanted to drive down to Kuala Lumpur in the afternoon. So I left the JobStreet office here at the Equatorial Hotel at 12.30pm, went to Tanjung Bungah to pick up my daughter from her college at 1pm, drove down to town for lunch and then decided to take the ferry back. That was at 2pm.
When I saw the waiting area at the ferry terminal unusually packed with vehicles, I decided to take the bridge home. Driving along the new Jelutong Expressway was leisurely enough but the moment I hit the stretch after Tesco, I could see that traffic was slowly crawling towards the bridge.
A glance at the bridge told me that something was greatly amiss. Traffic jams are normal on the Penang Bridge but those occur before or after working hours. This was at 2pm, a time when traffic on the bridge would usually be very smooth. But I could see that nothing was moving on the bridge at all. In the distance, I saw that the outlines of the big vehicles – buses, trailers and lorries – were at the standstill. Traffic had stalled.
Shit, I told my daughter. Time for Plan B. Easing my way into the Glugor/Bayan Lepas exits which were still flowing kind of smoothly, I turned back towards George Town.
I reached Weld Quay at about 2.30pm and saw that the traffic outside the ferry terminal was now in a total mess. Cars disembarking the ferries were unable to turn out from the terminal while others were cutting queue trying to turn into the waiting area.
I gave a quick call to my wife. Would you know anyone of authority at Penang Port? If you do, can you phone and suggest to them that they should do something to direct the traffic along Weld Quay?
In the meantime, I had to continue all the way towards the Esplanade roundabout in order to join the queue towards the ferry terminal. I’ve always been conscientious about not cutting queues but all around me, I was appalled to see cars, lorries and even buses cutting into my queue line from left and right.
By the time I reached the area outside the ferry terminal, the Penang Port had already mobilised their Port Police to direct traffic and ensure that nobody tried to cut lanes. My wife had managed to talk to someone at the Penang Port. Though no traffic police were in sight, the Port Police were doing their work.
I edged into the waiting area at about 3.30pm, got into the ferry at 4pm and was quite relieved to be home by 5pm. Remember, I was supposed to be on my way to KL in the afternoon but I was only able to leave home at 6pm. It was a three-hour delay but thankfully, it could have been much, much worse if I had not been alert enough to turn away from the Penang Bridge at the last minute.
There were a lot of intial conflicting reports of what actually happened that Friday afternoon. At first, I heard that it was a “simple” accident between a car and a trailer. Next I heard that it was a trailer that overturned on its side on the bridge. Now, I read that it was an accident between two trailers.
The accident occurred at the KM3.4 section of the mainland-bound lane of the bridge at about 1.30pm. The trailers were removed at about 4pm but by then, the accident had caused traffic along the Jelutong Expressway and the Bayan Lepas Expressway to stop. All roads leading to the expressways were snarled up as also the roads leading to the ferry terminal. I heard that normalcy returned only around midnight.
This whole episode only goes to show the continued lack of realistic traffic planning in Penang as a whole. I am very unhappy because:
- The Federal Government, especially the Works Ministry, was reluctant to recognise early that there was an urgent need for a second bridge linking the mainland and the island. If not for the Ninth Malaysia Plan, I doubt whether Penang will have had the second bridge approved. Now that it has, work must commence as soon as possible. We Penangites cannot afford another accident which brings the state to a complete standstill.
- The Penang State Government did not press the Federal Government hard enough during those years of the previous administration. They saw it coming a few years ago but they were powerless to do what was right for Penang. Is it anybody’s guess that Penang has lost its industrialisation edge to other states like Selangor and Johor?
- Projek Lebuhraya Utara Selatan for not being pro-active enough. They did a great job in clearing the wreckage on the bridge but what did they do to inform the general public who use the bridge? Couldn’t they have informed the radio stations to warn people away from the bridge once the gravity of the situation was realised? And why wasn’t regular alerts issued way into the night?
- Penang Port for always letting the traffic outside the ferry terminal get out-of-hand. Why can’t they deploy their Port Police at peak periods, especially Friday afternoons, to ensure that vehicles do not cut queues trying to get into the waiting area? The queue can stretch all the way back to the clock tower and it is basically an “everyone-for-themselves” situation.
- The stupid drivers of the two trailers. Were they racing on the bridge? If not, was one too impatient to over-take the other on the bridge? Such recklessness when they don’t realise their responsibilities in driving huge trailers can only have an inevitable result. Thankfully, nobody was injured.
- And lastly, all drivers who are reckless on the bridge. As a daily bridge user, I come across foolish drivers who think the bridge is the F1 circuit. They think it cool to weave from one lane to another. They don’t give a thought whether they’d get into an accident. They don’t give a damn that when they are in an accident, they inconvenience not only themselves but other bridge users behind them. Such people are downright inconsiderate and irresponsible towards themselves, their families, and other road users. If you look at the bigger picture, such accidents have repercussions on the state’s development. We can certainly do with less of them on the roads.