Public Transport
With there recent SMRT fiasco, I feel that Singapore is no longer where I want to be. Many of my friends do not get why I am so livid over this whole issue. Let me try and explain as concisely as I can.
To me, public transport is the lifeblood of the nation especially in an island state as small as Singapore. Not everyone may be able to afford a car, but we sure can use public transport to move around. It its he basic fundamental component of any economy - bringing the workers to their work and to their homes.
To have this important component utterly fail the way it has in the past week, is perhaps normal in other economies, but this is Singapore where everything has to be efficient. We are not like the Australians where everyone seems slightly more patient in situations like these. We are also not as nice as they are when understanding the situation as the following photo will tell.
While I would say this is not as bad as most countries, it is depressing to see this happening to Singaporean society in general.
With raising private transport ownership costs (you pay about 50K for a piece of paper that says you are allowed to own a car of a certain capacity), public transport has become more and more important to a country that depends a lot on their human potential; their ability to throw bodies at middle to high level tasks.
There is nothing we can do about the weather, but it does exacerbate the problem when things are fucking up and you are perspiring because of it. Doesn’t help that there was a fare hike for cabs prior to this happening. Its most probably not a conspiracy but it does just increase the frustration of it all.
So if the CEO of the public transport company, who is paid 1.2 million a year, can say that there are enough trains, its just people aren’t choosing to get on it, how can I not be livid? Even more so, the hike in fare prices recently is inversely proportional to service quality.
Oh yes, new signaling systems and new trains to handle the increase in load will only happen by 2015. I wonder how many more breakdowns can happen in that time. Statistical probability seems high when you take into account the things that happen this week.
So yes, I’m livid.
