See what SmartLane is and why you should know about it this holiday season
So what exactly is a SmartLane? Well, rather than just explain it the boring way, let me paint a picture for you with my writing instead. Let’s imagine a congested highway, if you want to get specific, maybe the PLUS highway. Typically this happens during festive seasons right?
Well, these kinds of situations also happen when there is construction going on at the highway as well or just during peak hours in general as I have personally witnessed the KL working crowd rush home to their hometowns in Seremban or the like on Fridays and let me tell you, it is the stuff of nightmares.
Moreover, anyone who has ever been caught in these horrendous traffic jams will tell you that the bulk of this crawling traffic can be alleviated if there was just 1 more lane open for the road users’ convenience. Well, that is exactly what the SmartLane is, an extra lane open during very specific times.
So the SmartLane is an initiative from the PLUS highway which will see the farthest left lane in some PLUS Highway locations, which can be referred to in the main image above. The goal of this is to add the capacity of which vehicles can drive on and reduce traffic congestion effectively.
So when will the PLUS Highway activate the SmartLane? Easy, the SmartLane will be activated during peak hours, in the event of any construction or maintenance work being done, during festive seasons and if there happens to be an accident on the highway causing a pile up of cars and higher traffic.
On top of that, it should be noted that the SmartLane will only be activated at the discretion of the proper authorities which include the LLM, JPJ and PDRM. It is also carried out by EDGENTA Infrastructures and PLUS so it will not always be active when expected.
To know if the SmartLane is indeed active, one can refer to the signboards on the road that announce if it is active or not or look out for PLUS operators on the scene waving their orange flags. Alternatively, the opening of the SmartLane will also be communicated to the public via the PLUS app, PLUS Twitter and (now X) and digital sign boards on the highway.
To that end, PLUS urges all road users to download the PLUS application, Waze and Google Maps as these map apps will also alert users if the SmartLane is active.
