MacRitchie Interchange?

A much hyped up dinner cum supper outing to Thomson's Prata Place turned out to be an agonising (but fun) 2 hr wait in a super jam along Lornie Road, towards Upper Thomson Road, near MacRitchie.

The cause? A fallen tree which had blanked out almost 2 and a half lanes of the 3 lanes present there.

Result? A jam stretching all the way to Bukit Timah Road that area. Superb aint it?

The evening started off great, Esther, Huiyan, Jinyao, Mark, Weili and I were celebrating Anqi's birthday at Vivocity, and we were deciding on the next course of action, when JY proposed Thomson's prata. Good suggestion to me, since I live nearby, and we tuang-ed awhile at Vivocity (including a banana cake cutting celebration! Not to forget also, Toys'R'Us!) before proceeding on a 93 to MacRitchie. Well, normally it would take about 30-45 minutes to get there, but today was totally different...

The bus moved fast along the majority of the route, till the PIE flyover, where traffic slowed to a mere snail's pace. Or maybe that of a sloth. Feelings of something bad happening ahead was reaffirmed by the ambulance which passed our bus.

The jam was really bad. Okay, maybe really wasn't such a great word to describe it after it. It was utterly disgusting in fact. Numerous buses sped past us on the other side towards Bukit Timah, whilst ours were stationary. And the number of buses on the opposite side started decreasing, decreasing, decreasing...till we saw none at all. My hypothesis: No buses at interchange liao. lol.

And we were talking all sorta crap, playing cards, playing finger games, wondering what had happened...2 possibilities in my opinion - 1) Car accident (which explains the presence of the ambulance) taking up 2 lanes and therefore the jam can be attributed to 3 lanes converging to one; 2) Tree fallen and block off most of the road.

There was little movement, and for long stretches of time we were forced to wait and see whether the bus would even get to inch forward...so much so that in the end we decided to just get down the bus, cross the road and see what is happening while on top of the bridge. Walked all the way to the front where we could see that there was seemingly some flashing lights and...a completely empty road ahead. Inquisitive as we were, the 7 of us proceeded ahead to check what's up.

We counted: 4 93s, 4 157s, 3 74s, 3 855s and a whole lot more buses stuck along that very stretch of road, so much so that I thought we were at a new type of interchange - the MacRitchie Road Interchange.

And when we arrived at the scene, we were greeted by a scene of greenery - a tree had fallen and blocked off 2 lanes and a little of the outer lane also. Small cars and motorcycles could pass it, but because the front of the pack were 2 buses and a trailer, it was impossible for any of the 3 to proceed further, thus the jam!

How many men does it take to remove a fallen tree?
Possibly 3 angmoh volunteers, 2 EMAS recovery people, 4 photographers, a policemen and many more bystanders.

Quite a number of bystanders were around, and I could see 3 angmohs trying to help out. Possibly residents around the area. One was armed with a saw, which seemed too puny compared to the size of the tree branches and trunk. Was wondering how long it would take for him to make an impact on the branches.

On top of that, there were 2 EMAS recovery personnel and their small towing truck, which was attempting to pull the branches at strategic locations so as to break it down further, allowing vehicles to clear through the outer lane at least. But going by the rate of progress (one woman resident nearby told me that it has been 1.5 hrs since it has been like that), and the scene of a tow truck which tried to move pull the branches apart but failed time and again (probably due to not enough horsepower?) almost convinced me that it might take longer to clear the trouble. At that time, it was about 2240 already, and we had spent about 30 mins in the 93 from the PIE flyover to where we got off.

Things changed when a policeman arrived with a chainsaw (now that's something) and proceeded to make quick work of the branches. It allowed the trailers and buses to clear, which meant that the jam was slightly resolved, and also helped in the ease of removal of the rest of the tree. By then, we had gone our separate ways - Esther and I towards AMK, the rest towards the Bukit Timah site. Buses were few and afar, but on the road towards AMK, all the buses which cleared the bottleneck were speeding like crazy, and the same could be said of the other vehicles as well.

Wow, the meters of the taxi uncles must be jumping like mad.

Took us about 20 minutes to walk to the MacRitchie bus stop, and I managed to hop on one of the 157s which came from Upp Thomson Road (possibly to beat the jam?)

A very interesting and lively encounter! Too bad, no cameras...pictures I'll try to get them...haha. Maybe it'll be reported in the news tomorrow la :)

Current Music: 潘美辰 - 最冷的夏天