I don't think the PAP will accept suggestion from the
public, they never want to accept suggestion from the
ground.
They have the committee headed by Gerard Eee to review the
salaries.
However, I have no confidence in Gerard to do a good job.
I strongly agree.
In the one year leading up to elections, people are already
making alot of noises regarding transport, cost of living, housing
and immigration.
The PAP proceeds to pay lip service, by 'promising' to change
and reflect upon their practices, with the PM's pre-election day
apology being the climax.
But post-election, we see them back to their old ways. nothing
has changed. Nothing will change.
1)
We retrenched people during the recession. We are still in the
process of recovery, and using the STI as a guage, we are nowhere
near our peak prior to the global recession.
But: Since we are supposed to be recovering,
with a diminished economy which requires a smaller workforce,
how come we did not see any decrease in our population
throughout the years of the recession?
Instead, we continue seeing an increase of population,
especially in the number of work permit workers.
2)
The PAP promised to bring down housing prices. Pre-election,
post-election, all I have seen are reports showing that housing
prices continue to climb, with the greatest rise in the prices of
HDB flats.
3)
Revamping of our transport infrastructure is long overdue. The
opening of the Circle line is necessary, and timely. But it does
not fully solve the problem.
It serves to link up estates previously not included in the mrt
network, providing these people with an alternative transport to
bus. This only serves to increase our MRT's passenger base, where
some people will switch from bus to mrt.
People who live in the north along the red line, and the east,
along the green line, will have little benefits from the opening of
the circle line.
The main issue with our rail transport is overcrowding, and
the difficulty of boarding the train during peak
hours. It is pointless to introduce more rail lines downstream,
when overcrowding typically happens in the upstream heartlands.
e.g. Jurong East, Yishun.
Yes, people may get off at Bishan and switch to circle line,
thus freeing up some space on the stuffy train. But all that is
irrelevant if you cannot even board the train from your estate in
yishun.
What LTA can do, is to encourage public bus operators to
use high capacity bendy buses or double decker
buses, instead of the mad rush for the newer
handicap-friendly euro V buses, which has a much reduced carrying
capacity.
With buses of decreased capacity, you need to hire more drivers,
put out more buses, ramped up frequency. Our buses seem overworked,
with increasingly common cases of buses catching fire on the
road.
Secondly, a major cause of traffic jams on road are caused by
traffic lights and junctions. It is common to see a long line of
vehicles along the exits of expressways, where they are held back
by traffic lights which take forever to turn green, and by
ceaseless cars who doesn't give way. Also, travelling down a
street, we are often amazed by the proximity of traffic lights.
Unnecessary stoppage time will decrease the smoothness of traffic
flow.
What we can do, is the removal of redundant traffic
lights. Since people are too lazy to climb bridges, why
not leave the climbing to the vehicles? We can build ramps or
tunnels at pedestrain crossings, thus bypassing the need to stop on
straight roads.
assigning of dedicated filter lane. We usually
have a give way line at filter lanes, where we are expected to give
way to oncoming traffic on main road before proceeding. This
is responsible for the daily jams we see at major expressway exits
like corporation road, changi exit etc.
Why not open up a dedicated lane for vehicles merging left? Then
there will be no need to stop and bring about a backlog of jams.
This will also enhance traffic flow.