I can tell you, that Ms Saw Phaik Hwa can keep up with that
attitude of hers. Sooner or later she's going to find trouble at
her doorstep; when that time comes, she will never be able to clean
it off her hands.
I can very safely tell you that almost everybody who relies on SMRT
treat her as Public Enemy Number One. I mean, what kind of...
faeces has SMRT gorged into our mouths? Lack of bus routes, old
buses (Nissans...), cockroach-infested buses (I once opened the
ventilation flap on one of the Malaysian Lances, and two
cockroaches fell onto me 
), treating the bus business as a money-making joke,
lengthening the frequency of MRT trains, modifying and cutting back
bus routes without any regard, not introducing many new bus routes
(Let's see what SMRT gave us between now and 2005: 922, 882, 902,
900A, 985W, 854E, 963E, Teacher's Estate, and what else? And for
SBS Transit... let's see... 5, 185, 175, 43, 45, 48, 109, 52, 57,
58, 59, 85, 116 (although it was withdrawn - crazy stupid route
), 402, 408, 409, 10e, 14e, 196e, 174e, 97e,
151e, 74e, 1N, 2N, 3N, 4N, 5N, 6N, 7N, 8N, ... all right, I lost
count (and I didn't even start with the shortworking trips!)),
severe corner cutting, etc...
However, I'm not for an all-out mega-merger, but rather, I would
like to see something like this:
Have the rail division of SMRT go to SBS Transit; SBS Transit's
rail division will be renamed SMRT, but will be under
ComfortDelGro. SMRT's bus and taxi division will go back to being a
independent unit, and will go back to be known as Trans Island (
). At the same time, allow a few
more bus companies to come out; fund them if necessary. Scrap the
territory system, and allow buses of any company to operate from
anywhere. In this system, you would effectively have a main company
running trains and buses, with smaller bus companies competing with
it's bus division - which I feel is OK for competition.
