SINGAPORE: Just before 4pm on Friday (May 30), two Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) vehicles – a white van and a black SUV – headed towards the departure lanes at Woodlands Checkpoint. A “lockdown” had been imposed at the departure exits to prevent vehicles from entering these lanes. Once the van and SUV came to a stop, about six officers began setting up traffic cones – some with reflective discs attached – along one of the lanes before it was converted into a contraflow lane. This meant that traffic flow on the lane was switched to allow arriving vehicles to enter instead. The cones were placed about 15m to 20m further down the contraflow lane to make it more visible to motorists so that they knew the lane was being narrowed, giving them time to react accordingly and merge safely into the remaining departure lanes.
In addition, safety barriers – which have always been deployed during contraflow operations – now have blinker lights mounted on them. These are part of the added safety measures at the land checkpoint after an accident on May 24. Just before 5.30am that day, a departing Singapore-registered car collided with an arriving Malaysia-registered bus along the Causeway. Preliminary investigations found that the contraflow operation was activated before barriers were put in place, which was not in accordance with safety procedures, ICA had said in a statement then. The car driver and his three passengers were taken conscious to the hospital. ICA said it will conduct a safety review into the accident, which “should not have happened”, and suspended contraflow operations over the weekend at both land checkpoints at Woodlands and Tuas. The operations resumed earlier this week on Monday. On Friday, members of the media got to witness the behind-the-scenes of the traffic operations. Soon after the cones were set up, this reporter was taken to the operations centre where officers monitored both vehicular and human traffic through the checkpoint on large screens. At about 4.30pm, heavy vehicles from the other side of the Causeway began streaming into the contraflow lane.
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