By TAN KARR WEI | Dec 18, 2009

Litrak: First stage will be ready in seven months

IF you are one of the 140,000 motorists passing through the LDP Taman Tun Dr Ismail (TTDI) interchange daily, you will probably be fuming as traffic has been at a crawl lately.

Highway concessionaire Lingkaran Trans Kota Sdn Bhd (Litrak) communications head Bhavani Krishna Iyer said the construction work was part of the project to upgrade the TTDI interchange.

The upgrading work is being done to mitigate the congestion in the area due to the three-phase traffic at the junction.

“We seek the understanding and patience of motorists as we are trying to finish the work in the shortest time possible. We were delayed for about five months due to a land issue,” she said.

She advised highway users to avoid the interchange as much as possible during peak hours and use alternative routes instead.

The first stage of construction involves building a flyover (along the existing one) for traffic coming from Kelana Jaya towards Kepong.

The construction will take seven months and once completed, the bridge will be opened to traffic in July 2010.

Currently, the two lanes for traffic coming from Kelana Jaya wanting to turn right into Taman Tun has been reduced to one.

“Once we have expanded the left lane (near the Damansara Utama BHP petrol station), we will close both lanes on the right because that is where the flyover will be,” she said.

She said the lane closure for traffic passing through the interchange from Section 16 and the Sprint highway heading towards Kepong was unavoidable.

The next stage of construction involves building a two-lane underpass for traffic coming from TTDI heading to Kepong and would bypass the current traffic light system.

The whole project is expected to be completed by mid-2011.

The alternative routes, besides other local roads already familiar to road users, suggested by Litrak is summarised in the table.

Those who have queries can send them to bhavani@litrak.com.my