8 horrible roads and junctions in Singapore that always get your blood boiling

Here's a list of some of them that you should take note of, especially if you're a newer driver.

ECP Marine Parade exit 

With two lanes each exiting ECP from either direction, there tends to be a lot of criss crossing of traffic — drivers wanting to turn to Marine Terrace (turning right), as well as those going to Parkway Parade (turning left). There's just a single left turning lane, and drivers trying to cut in will tend to hold up traffic behind. If you are turning left coming off ECP (City), be sure to keep to the left lane and start filtering as early as you can.

Upper Thompson Road, coming down from Lornie Viaduct

There's always heavy traffic here during peak hours, with two right turning lanes towards Marymount. Because traffic can get quite backed up, you will see drivers trying to jump queue one way or the other, which can cause even more log jam. There's a second junction slightly further down, turning into Jalan Todak, which can further back traffic up. Two right turn, two straight, don't get caught in the wrong one.

CTE Havelock Road exit

Coming out of CTE toward the Chinatown area, there is a massive six lane road, but the distance from the exit to the next junction is pretty short. This means that if you want to turn left, that's a lot of lane-changing to be done in not much time and space. Same goes if you want to turn right coming from Havelock Road. There's a second bigger junction slightly further ahead (Eu Tong Sen St), which will cause further traffic log jam.

Bideford Road

Right next to Paragon Shopping Centre, there is always heavy traffic here because it leads to CTE from the centre of the Orchard area. There are three lanes that effectively filters into two (the right most is a right turn only), and there's also ample traffic feeding into Bideford Road from the Paragon carpark exit, as well as people exiting the Bideford carpark next to the mosque.

CTE (city) AMK Ave 1 entrance and Braddell exit

This is a somewhat complex one — the Ang Mo Kio Ave 1 entrance lane overlaps with the Braddell exit lane, so you are going to have cars both trying to get in and out, in what is a typically congested area. This causes traffic to slow to a crawl during peak hours, and just one exit later is the single lane that leads into PIE, which causes even more traffic to back up. This whole general area of the CTE is just a nightmare, especially during peak hours.

ECP Rochor exit

This is another road with criss crossing traffic, and four lanes that converge into three, then expand back out into four. The main point of congestion is traffic filtering into and out of Suntec City. The two-lane exit out of Suntec is also oddly designed, with two lanes separated by a big chevron. The left-most lane leads into a left-turning lane (so some drivers are trying to filter right, and the right lane leads right into traffic, which can make for some real slow going.

Loyang Ave

During peak hours, both sides of Loyang Ave near the TPE entrance/exit will always be jammed. Always, and without fail. It's especially bad on the side towards Tampines — initially just four lanes, two which are right turning and one that turns left. That leaves just one straight line that eventually opens up into three. It's a mess, further compounded by the large number of buses and heavy vehicles.

Bartley Road

There's a big bottleneck coming down from the Bartley Viaduct — Maris Stella, an MRT station, traffic into and out of the Bidadri area, and a short right-turn lane towards Serangoon Ave 1 that causes traffic to back up, effectively turning a three-lane road into two. This means that during peak hours, traffic can get backed up all the way onto the viaduct.

This article was first published in sgCarMart.

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