IN THE past 10 years, many new highways have been constructed all over Kuala Lumpur with the aim to disperse traffic to and from the city centre to the main ring roads and highly populated residential areas.

I am very concerned that Kuala Lumpur is fast becoming a congested city caused by the poor designs of these “city highways”.

I always held the view that Kuala Lumpur has good infrastructure and that traffic jams were a result of firstly, poor systems management of the traffic, and secondly, the recent construction of the highways into main ring roads of Kuala Lumpur which are poorly designed, especially in the area of entry and exit into the city.

It seems that all the highway landing are happening in already highly congested areas, for example Sungai Besi, Jalan Tun Razak, MRR2 and Jalan Kuching.

This only compounds the flow of vehicles into these ring roads which do not have the capacity to take any more traffic.

The construction of these private highways into Kuala Lumpur happened in the past 10 years and there seems to be a huge compromise on the locations and designs of the entry and exit points into the city.

Upon completion of the highways, bottlenecks were created and traffic got worse at the entry and exit points in our beautiful city.

Sadly, despite strong objections by many resident associations to the authorities, the construction of poorly designed highways continued to happen and are happening even today.

Construction of roads and highways alone is not the solution. Good design is the key and I am of the opinion that we have compromised on this matter over the years.

I hope the authorities will go back to the drawing board and re-look at all the designs that have been approved and also look at those that will be approved in future to salvage the situation.

PARDIP KUMAR KUKREJA

Kuala Lumpur