Malaysian Expressway System - Expressway Standards

Expressway Standards

The construction, standards, management and usage of expressways in Malaysia are subject to Federal Roads Act (Private Management) 1984. In Malaysia, expressways are defined as high-speed routes with at least four lanes (two in each direction) and should have full access control or partial access control. Most expressways in Malaysia are controlled-access expressways.

Expressways are defined as high-speed highways built under the JKR R6 rural highway standard, as dual-carriageways of at least 4 lanes (2 lanes per carriageway) with full access control, grade-separated interchanges and high design speed limit of 120 km/h, allowing the maximum speed limit of 110 km/h. However, the section between Cahaya Baru and Penawar of the Senai-Desaru Expressway is built as a two-lane single carriageway with the similar features as the Swiss autostrasse, making it as the first true two-lane controlled-access expressway in Malaysia. All expressways are considered as federal highways, but administered by Malaysian Highway Authority (MHA) and the respective concessionaire companies.

Highways, on the other hand, complement the national network of expressways and federal roads and built under the JKR R5 rural highway standard, with relatively high design speed limit (although not as high as the expressway speed limit) of 100 km/h, allowing the maximum speed limit of 90 km/h. The highways are built with partial access control, and grade-spearated interchanges and at-grade crossings are both permitted. However, it is possible for a federal or state highway to be built with almost equivalent standard of an expressway with the exception of lower speed limit, for example the Federal Highway. Highways can be built either as dual-carriageway or 2-lane single carriageway.

Before the mid-1990s, there were no specific coding system for the expressways. When more and more expressways were built, a system of expressway numbering was applied to all expressways. Expressways are labelled with the letter E followed by assigned numbers, for example the code for North-South Expressway southern route is . The expressways have green signs and the text colour is white.

However, there are some exceptions in some highways. Some highways like Federal Highway (Federal Route ) and Skudai Highway (Federal Route ) retain their federal route codes. In addition, there are some highways in Malaysia which are classified as municipal roads such as Kuala Lumpur Middle Ring Road 1.

The syntax for highway exits in Malaysia is in the format EXIT xxnn or EXIT xxnn, where xx is the expressway code number (which can be one or two digits) and nn is the two-digit assigned number for each highway exit. For example, Johor Bahru exit at the end of North-South Expressway is labelled EXIT 257, where the last two digits (57) are the assigned exit number and the first digit (2) is the expressway route number (E2). Meanwhile, Jalan Templer exit at the Federal Highway is labelled EXIT 224, where the two digits (24) are the assigned exit number and the first digit (2) is the federal route number (2), . Expressways have distance markers in green colour (blue for federal expressways and highways) placed every 100 m.