KESAS Sdn Bhd has completed a road-widening project as a long-term solution to resolve the traffic congestion at the stretch between the Kemuning and Hicom interchanges in Shah Alam.

According to Kesas chief operating officer Imran Gulcharan Abdullah, the RM17mil project involves about 2km from the y-junction at Km30.1 to the Hicom interchange at Km32.9 (east bound) on the Kesas Highway.

Work began in April last year and was completed within 15 months. It was open to traffic on July 15 this year.

Imran said the upgrade work involved:

> Road-widening from three to five lanes at the 2km stretch;

> Road-widening from one to three lanes at the Hicom interchange;

> Widening of the U-turn at the Hicom interchange (for motorists to U-turn from Taman Sri Muda to head towards Klang); and

> Construction of a motorcycle lane parallel to the main road.

?We used to have a contra flow to ease the morning peak period congestion, from 7am till 9am. Within that two-hour period, there will be about 2,000 vehicles passing through one lane alone,? Imran said.

He attributed the traffic bottleneck, queue-jumping and inconsiderate drivers as the main contributing factors to the congestion, while accidents, breakdowns, bad weather and occasional issues with the traffic police added fuel to the problem.

"If there?s an accident or if it?s raining, it can affect the time taken to clear that stretch, from half an hour to one hour," Imran said.

"We take the public complaints very seriously because we want to improve our service level. Our procedures require us to respond to complaints within 24 hours," he said.

Kesas has been operating the highway that stretches from Sri Petaling to Pandamaran for the past 12 years.

"We take it as a good sign that there has been no complaint since the upgraded stretch was open to traffic," he said.

According to Imran, Kesas is sensitive to the congestion faced by motorists and will do its best to provide and maintain an efficient service for highway users.

"The upgrading project was done on our own initiative without any assistance from the government, although the necessary approvals were given by the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM)," Imran said.