A MAJOR milestone in Singapore's road network will be crossed this morning, with the opening of an expressway given the job of easing congestion between downtown and the north.
I think LTA is not improving the Singapore traffic condition and system at all. It has been just going round and round in circles. Soon everyone will become very frustrated !
I wish they could resign and give someone else a chance to manage and solve the ever existing traffic problem.
I saw a National Geographic documentary on this today on how South Korea tackled this problem and BEST of all they solved their traffic problem. It was most informative and enlightening to me.
I hope LTA can send their staff over there and learn from them. They have a population of 10 million and make use of roads, buses, cars and trains to solve ther problem.
Please learn how their system worked :
1) Colour coded buses
2) Massive use of GPS in cars, handphones and token cards inorder to capture daily traffic and people trafaic pattern
4) Their TOPIS, VDS and AVI monitoring system.
Their main focus and priority was the people and how the new system will benefit the lives and convenience of people and businesses.
Their MOTTO and GOAL was "World Class state of the transport system and citizen-oriented comprehensive traffic policy".
Please wake up ....... LTA and Transport ministry !
The officials in LTA need to be fired for they don't even understand the basic concept of "compounding". They allowed 3% per annum car population growth, over 20 years (since the inception of COE), that would mean 80.6% growth, and not just 60%. In 25 years, the car population will double.
Do you know why South Korea has no other choice but to bite the bitter pill to go through that painful, costly and politically risky land transport reform a few years ago?
Because they had been neglecting forward planning and avoiding taking tough policy decisions for decades until thier land transport sitution iwas so bad that it was totally economically unsustainable and politically suicidal. Their travel speed was at best 10km/hr. 3 hours to cummute to work was a norm. They were breathing soot. Their naturel reserves and historic heritage sites were 'dying'.
They had no choice but to pump in huge public fund to turn it around. The Seoul mayor took a risky political gamble to take the bull by the horn and started the obvious policy solutions. Not surprisingly the results were obvious as they had a very low base (poor traffic performance) to begin with.
Should we simply avoid early tough policy inteventions, wait for the problems to be reality and then follow Seoul's reform?
I do not like some of the decisions made by LTA. But I know I do not want to be in the old Seoul's situation.
ERP as a penalty element always receive the wrath of the motorists.
What is the solution?
Be transparent. Return the penalty as a direct reward element to those who do not contribute to the peak hour jam lor.
Giving rebate in road tax is not felt directly by motorists because of the lack of direct co-relation to reducing traffic jam by using only the penalty element.
Motorists can only feel the direct benefit if there reward element is balanced off with the penalty element, the yang and yin of the system.
Giving rebate across the board benefits the bigger cc cars more, lah. Where is the equitability?
LTA, please don't be myopic lah. Your road tax rebate system is flawed.
"relief", but for how long?? The govt will soon switch on the 16 ERP gantries!!!
Mr Gan said there is "no easy solution", but the irony is that ERP is the easy solultion!!!!. Why do we pay ministers millions to get such easy solutions????
September 20, 2008 Saturday, 01:36 AM
