Residents group offers solutions for localised congestion issues in PJ

The Stakeholders and Residents Against PJD Link (ScRAP) group says building short flyovers and underpasses can solve localised traffic congestion issues without needing to construct a highway.

This was one of the suggestions made by the group during a briefing in response to news that residents of Taman Medan had come up in support of the contentious PJD Link.

The briefing involved representatives from residents associations (RAs), joint management bodies (JMBs), management committees (MCs) and commercial entities from Petaling Jaya and Bandar Kinrara, Selangor.

ScRAP chairman David Yoong said Taman Medan residents’ complaints about traffic congestion and call for a highway to alleviate it, needed to be respected.

“We understand their localised congestion issues, but what they need are multiple links from Petaling Jaya and New Pantai Expressway (NPE) to bypass their neighbourhood roads to access Kesas (Shah Alam Expressway),” he said.

He rationalised that this could be achieved by building short flyovers from Jalan Penchala in Section 2 to pass over and above NPE to reach Kesas.

“These solutions are cheaper, may be built faster and, most importantly, offer toll-free access.

“There isn’t a need to build a highway that transcends an entire city to resolve localised congestion problems,” he said during a briefing in Section 14, Petaling Jaya.

It was reported in a news portal recently that Taman Medan assemblyman Dr Afif Bahardin had urged the Selangor government to implement PJD Link, and that “several residents associations had agreed that there was a need for the highway”.

The Taman Medan Residents Association coalition sent a statement to StarMetro and claimed that some 50,000 residents from the area support the proposed PJD Link.

Yoong said ScRAP had similar proposals for Jalan Templer snarls following Section 5 and 6 residents’ grouses, from the Jalan Selangor roundabout all the way to the T-junction with Jalan Kelang Lama.

“Combinations of flyovers, an underpass and an overhead U-turn bridge are sufficient to relieve the many jams which happen daily during peak hours along Jalan Templer and the roads that connect to it, including Jalan Selangor, Jalan Gasing and Jalan Othman.

“Most critically, these are all toll-free short-span solutions.”

Representatives at the briefing included those from Bandar Utama, Damansara Jaya, Damansara Kim, Section 19, Section 17, SS2, Five Stones Condominium, The Hub SS2, Section 14, Section 20, Section 22, Section 51 and Section 4 in Petaling Jaya, Vista Lavender Apartments, the alumni association of a school located smack in the path of the proposed highway, and committee members of the Say No To PJD Link group and Persatuan Petaling Jaya Lestari.

Yoong said their voices reflected the sentiments of over 300,000 residents and stakeholders in the affected areas.

Meanwhile, Syed Mohd Taufik from Bandar Utama commented on the limitation of existing highways to disperse traffic, saying that their township was already bound on both sides by Sprint Highway and Damansara-Puchong Highway.

He said PJD Link was not going to ease their problems.

PJD Link is a proposed 25.4km dual-lane elevated expressway connecting Damansara in Petaling Jaya to Bandar Kinrara in Puchong.

On July 31 last year, Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari had announced the state government’s decision to scrap the project.

However, there have since been attempts to revive it.