Ministry of Works (KKR) have confirmed that highways will go toll-free on 23 and 26 December in conjunction with the upcoming Christmas weekend. The toll-free implementation has been previously hinted at by Deputy Works Minister Ahmad Maslan although originally, the announcement was supposed to take place this Friday.
The toll-free period applies to all toll plazas throughout Malaysia. However, users still have to pay tolls at Bangunan Sultan Iskandar and Linkedua’s Tanjung Kupang in Johor as both of them are located at the Malaysia-Singapore borders.
Christmas toll-free highway programme to cost RM21 million per day
According to Ahmad Maslan, the government will have to pay RM21 million per day to the highway concessionaires for the implementation of the toll-free period this Christmas. So, you are looking at a total cost of around RM42 million to cover both days.
As a comparison, the government forked out RM80.07 million for previous Hari Raya Aidilfitri’s toll-free programme. In addition to that, the same programme for Deepavali and Chinese New Year carried a cost of RM42.31 million and RM 41.21 million, respectively.
Be prepared for a high volume of traffic
In today’s announcement, KKR noted that these dates were chosen to avoid the concentration of traffic. It is also meant to optimise highway operations as well as the coordination of additional logistics, especially those that are related to the highway rest areas.
Despite that, KKR has advised all highway users to plan their journey accordingly. In addition to that, they also should take the travel time advisory from highway operators into consideration to help make their journey this coming Christmas weekend much smoother.
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