INTERACTIVE: Families who left at night beat festive highway crawl

By SHYAFIQ DZULKIFLI

PETALING JAYA: The balik kampung exodus from the Klang Valley gathered momentum on Saturday (Feb 14) as families took to the highways during the overlapping festives and school holiday.

The Star previously reported that traffic was expected to peak on Friday (Feb 13) ahead of the Chinese New Year super weekend and the start of Ramadan.

The overlap anticipated to intensify both outbound and return flows, with Muslims also beginning early balik kampung journeys as Ramadan approaches.

An analysis of travel times tracked from Feb 13 to Feb 15 shows a clear pattern: departures between 10am and 4pm consistently recorded the longest travel durations across major highways out of Kuala Lumpur.

Travel times were recorded via Google Maps at two-hour intervals along four popular festive corridors — northbound to Penang, eastbound to Kota Bharu via both the Central Spine Road and the East Coast Expressway (ECE), and southbound to Johor Bahru.

Across all four routes, motorists departing after 8pm generally experienced shorter journey times and higher average speeds.

Those who left at 10pm instead of 10am saved between 45 minutes and nearly two hours, depending on the route.

Among the routes analysed, the KL–Johor Bahru stretch experienced the most fluctuation.

At its peak, the 320km journey stretched to five hours and 25 minutes for a 2pm departure on Feb 15.

By contrast, motorists leaving late at night completed the same journey in just over three and a half hours.

There was a nearly two-hour difference between the fastest and slowest recorded KL-Johor Bahru trips.

When distance was factored in, average speeds along the southern corridor dipped below 60km/h during peak hours, compared with more than 90km/h during off-peak periods.

The KL–Penang corridor also experienced a notable surge in travel time late Saturday morning, when the 313km journey stretched to nearly five hours.

Compared with its fastest recorded duration of around three and a half hours, this translated into roughly a 30% drop in average speed during peak congestion.

The KL–Kota Bharu route via the ECE recorded the longest overall travel time, peaking at seven hours and 33 minutes on Saturday (Feb 14) morning.

Despite the lengthy duration, the ECE route maintained a relatively steady flow throughout the three-day tracking period.

The shorter Central Spine Road route peaked at six hours and 53 minutes during the same mid-morning window on Saturday.

Overall, the data indicates that motorists who staggered their departure times — particularly to late evening hours — were able to significantly reduce travel time during the festive rush.

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