Sarawak is replacing its ferries with bridges. The state is building a coastal road the length of the country's longest state, and the hard part was never the tarmac — it was the fourteen major rivers that cut the coast into sections a ferry queue apart. Here is what is being built, what is finished, and what it changes.

Sixteen bridges, and why they are the project

The Coastal Road Network is defined by its river crossings. As of the opening of the Batang Saribas 1 bridge, five of a planned sixteen bridges were complete — Batang Rajang, Muara Lassa, Marudi, Jepak and Saribas 1 — with a further six expected that year and four the year after.

Saribas 1 itself gives the scale of a single crossing: 1.55 kilometres long and RM375.5 million, and it removed a thirty-minute ferry wait at the Saribas river.

The Batang Lupar crossing

The largest of them spans the Batang Lupar between Triso in Meludam and Sebuyau. Bernama reported the structure at roughly seven kilometres and RM848 million, replacing the ferry that had carried that traffic — a crossing whose waits stretched at weekends and on high tides.

The same report put the wider Kuching-to-Miri coastal road at 896 kilometres and around RM5 billion, and noted that the original federal-state cost-sharing arrangement gave way to Sarawak continuing on its own allocation after a change of government.

Where the work stands now

Progress is reported package by package rather than as one figure. In March 2026 the Ministry of Infrastructure and Port Development put Package A5 — the 29.5-kilometre stretch from the Batang Saribas 2 bridge to Roban junction in the Betong division — at 61.81 per cent physical progress, with completion expected in the first quarter of 2027. That package ties the coastal road into the Pan Borneo Highway.

Alongside it, the ministry valued the separate Sungai Krian bridge at RM112,499,580.09 — a reminder that these are individually tendered structures, not a single line item.

How this differs from Pan Borneo

The two are separate programmes and are often confused. Pan Borneo is the older and larger of the two: when Phase 2 was announced it was costed at about RM15 billion, of which RM13.5 billion was to be borne by the private sector, running from Tanjung Datu to Miri. That announcement dates from 2015 and its original 2020 completion target has long since passed — a useful caution against reading any single figure from this programme as current.

The coastal road is the newer, state-funded network running nearer the sea, linking the coastal towns between Kuching and Miri that the trunk road bypasses inland.

What changes on the ground

  • Ferries become bridges. Each completed crossing removes a scheduled wait — thirty minutes at Saribas, longer at Batang Lupar on a bad tide.
  • Coastal towns join the network. Betong, Sarikei, Mukah and the settlements between them stop being served only by inland detours.
  • The timetable is per package. There is no single completion date, and packages report separately — which is why "the coastal road opens in year X" is not a claim the ministry itself makes.

Sources