The southbound lane, which had been under construction since earlier this year, was supposed to open in August, but protests from area business owners led to the implementation being pushed back to after Deepavali.
PARKING bays in Jalan Tun Sambanthan and around shop lots in Little India will no longer be available to motorists from this weekend.
The new contra-flow bus & taxi lane in Brickfields. Image courtesy of the NST.
[TRANSIT: Click here for a larger version of the image above.]City Hall, in a statement, said the removal of the parking bays was to facilitate the implementation of the contra-flow bus and taxi lane system in Jalan Tun Sambanthan.
Under the system, only buses and taxis are allowed to pass through the dedicated lane from the city centre through Jalan Tun Sambanthan and coming to the fountain intersection and exit either at the end of Jalan Tun Sambanthan heading towards Taman Seputeh or turning into Jalan Travers to exit to Bangsar, from 6am to 8pm daily.
With the implementation of the dedicated lane system, which takes effect this Saturday, buses will not be allowed to turn into Jalan Sultan Abdul Samad.
Passengers are to wait for buses at the bus stop next to the Hong Leong Bank.
A taxi stand will be built next to the CIMB bank in Jalan Tun Sambanthan 4.
Forty-one parking bays have been allocated in Jalan Tun Sambanthan’s back lanes and 54 are available along the back lanes around SMK La Salle Brickfields.
Business operators will only be allowed to load and unload their goods in the back lanes or dedicated bus and taxi lanes between 8pm and 6am.
Motorists are advised to heed traffic rules at all times, especially when the changes to the traffic system are taking place.
TRANSIT Says:
TRANSIT hopes that the implementation of the bus & taxi lane in Brickfields will be a definite step in reducing traffic congestion on Jalan Tun Sambanthan, which causes significant delays for bus services.
At the same time, TRANSIT hopes that more effort will be made to ensure that the bus lanes are not blocked, whether by private vehicles, buses or taxis, and that service is not delayed by slow loading & unloading of buses & taxis.
We also expect that DBKL & SPAD will make a significant effort to ensure that bus services are efficient through this very dense stretch.
However, TRANSIT must also point out that we need more buses to bypass Brickfields and exit KL to the south using Jalan Syed Putra / Lingkaran Syed Putra. And in the future, the Federal Highway – Syed Putra route will be Malaysia’s first Bus Rapid Transit line, as proposed by SPAD in the Bus Transformation Plan.
Transit Malaysia 
One reply on “Brickfields contra-flow bus & taxi lane to begin operation this weekend, from 3 December 2011”
[…] December 3rd, 2001, buses & taxis leaving KL on the southbound route through Brickfields began using the […]