A Tale Of Two Highways

Early morning. Typical rush hour jam, people muttering curses under their breath, blood pressure rising, radio traffic report telling you what you ALREADY know, time to call your boss and inform you'll be late AGAIN.....

Early morning. Serenity. Birds chirping, cars hardly seen.


Believe it or not, the above describes two highways in the Klang Valley at the EXACT same time of the day, morning rush hour. So, what''s wrong with this picture?

Money, that's what. Money that must be repaid to the guys who built the highway, thats what.

The highways in question? Well, there's actually two sets of them - Sprint highway and Penchala link, Federal highway and New Pantai Expressway.

Penchala' s charging RM 2 one way, NPE's RM 1.60 + RM 1.60 (if you wanna join back Federal highway again). No prizes for guessing which highways are jammed up.

The obvious next question is, why don't they lower the toll? Coz the gomen's compensating them, based on some consultant's ASSUMPTION of the traffic volume and definition of reasonable toll charge.

Now, here's an idea for everyone to chew on ...... since both the companies that built the highways are public listed, how about the gomen buying them over with our hard earned EPF funds and THEN lowering the tolls?

Maybe, the correct question should be - why is it NOT being done? No prizes for guessing this one .......