App created to avoid Causeway, Second Link traffic jams

Mr. Hayden Lak, a 35-year old Malaysian, is a permanent resident who runs a tech business here and has been commuting to Singapore for two decades and he knows how agonising it can be. His experiences led him to create a web application that charts traffic trends at the Causeway and Second Link to help drivers beat the queues, reported The Straits Times. 

Causewayjam.com gives motorists information on how long they will have to wait in traffic as well as an indication of whether conditions will ease up. It was launched last month and is accessible via web browsers. iOS and Android versions will be downloadable next month.

The idea came last December when he saw crowds heading across the Causeway for the holidays. "We know the traffic is always bad in December, but last year was terrible - it was unprecedented," said Mr. Lak, adding that waiting times sometimes exceeded three hours.

Mr. Lak, who learnt programming while studying at Nanyang Technological University, built the app in about a month. Using traffic data obtained from Google, the app gives users an estimate of how long they can expect to wait in traffic. It also stores this data and plots it on a graph, allowing users to look at traffic conditions over a six-hour period seven days earlier.