FRIGHTFUL TRAFFIC
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 300,000 crossed the Johor-Singapore Causeway daily, making it one of the world’s busiest borders.
During the 2022 year-end holiday season, more than 360,000 travellers passed through the Woodlands and Tuas Checkpoints daily.
Hours-long traffic jams are a daily reality for many who travel in and out of Singapore every morning and evening. These jams have only worsened over the years and are showing no signs of getting better.
Many daily commuters entering Singapore wake up at 4am to make it to the Johor Bahru border checkpoint by 5am in order to get through the traffic gridlock for work, Johor chief minister Onn Hafiz Ghazi was cited as saying on a recent trip to Singapore.
Friday nights are particularly frightful for those leaving Singapore, with congestion at both checkpoints.
On Sundays when many return to Singapore after a weekend in Malaysia, traffic can snarl from the Bangunan Sultan Iskandar all the way down to Jalan Tebrau a good kilometre away.
And then there is the usual mess during public and school holidays when traffic inevitably spikes. Families have reported getting caught in six- to eight-hour crawls.
Over the years we have seen regular public advisories put out by Singapore to try and alleviate the jams by advising motorists to plan their trips. More car counters have also been built and there is an ongoing effort to introduce automated gates to help shorten the time needed to process the passports.