[redbean]

Hi Corry,

The situation will improve, maybe not because of the new fare structure. When more graduates become bus drivers, we will have a better quality of drivers, oops, I mean bus captains, who are qualified and disciplined and can take instructions better. They too should be able to appreciate what is providing good and efficient service are all about.

World class transport systems need world class bus captains and also world class passengers. And of course, world class fare.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

What is $1b?

We are so rich now that throwing up a number like $1b seems nothing. And what can $1b buy? A signalling system for the MRT to get the trains travel faster and to move people faster. That's all.

What can $1b do to SBS Transit? For one, they have ordered 600 brand new and 'all environmentally friendly and Euro V compliant' buses at a total cost of $268m! $1b could actually buy 2000 of such modern buses for the road.

The signalling system better be worth the money.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A standing Orgy

It was a case of meat to meat. The people were literally glued to one another. They were squeezed so tightly that if you remove their clothings, the flesh could have fused together. The breathing was heavy. The eyes were in a daze, some in a state of shock and disbelief. Wet, yes, I could see that everyone was wet, perspiring and sweating, young and old, men and women.

It was a standing orgy alright. And I was caught in the midst, right in the thick of action. The foreign workers loved every minute of it. That was the standard of public transportation they were used to. I was wondering how the cleanly dressed female office workers and the little girls in school uniform felt about the big squeeze.

And this standing orgy will repeat and can repeat practically everyday. All it needs is for the train to delay for 15 mins. And that was how long my morning train took to arrive. And everything slowed down. At every station the commuters going down would have to squeeze slowly through a mess of fusion meat. It took quite a while, and a big struggle to get out of the train. And to make matter worst, the huge crowd outside were panicky, trying to force themselves into the party, to join the orgy. The time taken for the journey simply doubled.

This little delay can cripple the normal lifestyle and routine of the commuters. It can bring everything to a halt if the breakdown is extended. This is the price we are paying for living it up to the limits. Good to increase the population to 6m. We can increase to 10m with a little clever planning. And we can have orgies everyday too. Nice!
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Good names for MRT stations

We have Phoenix, Petir and Pending in the Bukit Panjang LRT line. We are going to have Kadaloor, Coral Edge and Riviera in Sengkang. The ST asked whether these names ring a bell. I heard a thud.

Maybe I shall offer a few nice sounding names that will ring a bell. Obama ok? Harry Potter should definitely ring a bell if Obama doesn’t. Mickey Mouse will be music to the children. Buckingham Palace, this should sound glorifying. Pavarotti is another excellent name for a train station. ‘You have arrived at Pavarotti Station.’

OK, OK, I got carried away a bit. Do we have a basis in selecting names for MRT stations? Old landmarks are acceptable. Honouring our historical personalities is also OK. But how to relate to Devan Nair Station in Sengkang? Did Devan lived there before, his birth place, or any institution or landmark that reminds people of him there?

A better way out is to hold a naming contest. But don’t engage the professional agencies. They will charge a million bucks for a name. Get the people to suggest and the winners be awarded with a prizes. $1000 for each station name accepted. There will be many participants and the involvement of the people will make them feel proud and comfy with the names they have chosen.

Let me guess what the people will choose. The kids will like Valkrie, Ironman or Spiderman. The youth would love to call the station Angelina Jolie or Christie Chung. Who are they anyway? The aunties would be crazy with names like Baey Yong Joon. But those aunties in the grassroot organizations would probably vote in favour of Lim Sway Say or Lim Boon Heng. The well heeled and well travelled may want things like Metzingen, Baden Baden, Marienplatz or something like that.

Come to think of it, finding a good name for a station is not easy huh. Better leave it to the supertalents and live with Kadaloor, Coral Edge and Riviera. Never mind if they don’t ring a bell. One final attempt, Timbuktu!
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

High COE prices going to disrupt family life

Hooray, my old car has appreciated in value. Many old car owners are jubilant and praying that the COE prices will continue to rise, to hit the $100k mark. And in tandem the value of their old cars will rise as well. But beware, this orgasm is short lived. Just one last time. No more orgasm subsequently for many. After the old car’s life span is expired, some would not be able to cough out another $100k for a new COE and a new car.

Many have the same experience in owning HDB flats. Prices going up, happy like hell. But don’t ever sell, no chance to buy back unless one still got one more chance with the HDB.

What is disturbing in the two great price hikes is how they will eat up the limited disposable incomes of many families. Some families rely heavily on the car for their mobility, to bring children/seniors to schools, to care givers, to all kinds of classes and activities. Minus the car, life is going to be very disruptive and miserable.

But there are convenient and easily accessible public transports available, the MRT, buses and the taxis. When time is an issue with tight schedules, shuttling between work, home, schools, tuition centres, parent’s homes etc etc, it is going to be hectic and a frustrating waiting game for taxis even if they can afford to.

Our social system is getting to be less caring and less family friendly. Can families who really need the car make do without them?

Is the high COE prices really unavoidable, like high HDB prices, high medical prices? Where are we going? For the sake of the poor motorists and those who really need a car, the present COE bidding system must be changed. No more stupid explanation that it is the best system. For one, no bidding by car companies. Two, the bidders shall pay the price they bid and not the lowest. This will prevent the crazily rich from bidding $100k or $200k for his COE knowing that they need not pay for what they bid. And neither can the car companies bid as high as they want while the helpless real buyers suffered in silence. Let’s hope the super talents will use their talents for the good of the motorists.

But worst is to come. When more people give up car ownership, the MRT is going to be bursting in the seams. And they would be another good opportunity to hike fares to provide better services!
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A sad accident

Foreign student fainted and fell into the MRT tracks and both her legs were run over by the train. She has been here only a few weeks and wanted to learn English. Now she is going to live her life without her legs.
Some are angry why there are no dividing screens to prevent people falling into the tracks. I ask, why can’t the trains slow down as they approach the station to a more reasonable speed to allow the driver to slam on his brakes in an emergency? Why didn’t the driver stop in time?

I have seen many crazy drivers coming to a screeching halt at traffic junctions even when they knew that the lights are red from a distance. Is it such a big hustle to slow down the trains? If they can go down to a speed enough for emergency brakes, you don’t even need the expensive dividing screens. Oh ya, the whole system will slow down and people will kpkb. As I have suggested, the trains can go on a higher speed in between stations to catch up for lost time. Ok, I am ignorant of how the train operates. Maybe it cannot be done and need a $6 billion system to improve it.

It may be difficult to stop in time when someone intends on suicide and time it at such that the train is near enough before taking the plunge. In normal accidents, there could be some time interval to see the impending accident. Anyway, the best solution is to stop operating the trains.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Cages for MRT stations

The recent tragic case of a promising Thai student falling into the MRT track and losing both her legs must have made many people thinking. How to prevent such accidents from happening in an area that apparently is having an unusual number of such accidents. They are preventable of course, or could be greatly reduced.

The artistically attractive and high tech barriers that have been erected in some stations seem to be the solution to such problems. They are expensive and require high technical and engineering skills to instal them, and the poor commuters will eventually have to pay for them. The costs could come in tens or hundreds of millions if maintenance and service and replacement are included.

Funny thing is that many must have seen railways running through the centre of a market, or people living a few feet from operational railway lines and nothing of such happens to the residents. Is it a miracle, that there is an invisible hand preventing accidents from happening in such a dangerous situation?

There are many kinds of people who will end up in the tracks, intentionally, by mischief or by accident. There are the suicide squad that comes with one purpose, to jump when the train is approaching. There are the real suicide bombers that will blow themselves up and the trains in the same time. Then the mischievious kids and their pranks, and the normal accidents like the school girl, falling for some unexpected reasons.

The high tech barriers cannot do the job properly against people who are bent on jumping on the tracks, even with CCTV cameras. You would need to put all the commuters into a cage if absolute safety is needed. Also, the expensive high tech system is superfluous, overkilled, and a big waste of money. It is like, since the commuters are crying for safety, give it to them at whatever cost, and make them happy, and make them pay.

To prevent simple accidents like people falling into the tracks without intending so, a simpler barrier could do the job just as effective as the high tech barrier. A railing like those in high rise flats, maybe double layer of railings could do the job just as fine. Low cost, easy to instal and minimal maintenance. What is it so difficult to put up simple railings, couple with a few measures of a pair of watchful eyes through CCTVs, alert staff and alert drivers?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Transport fare increases coming
Cost is going up, fuel cost, labour cost and buying of new buses. The commuters pay. The commuters are expected to pay for all the cost increases, bonuses, and the inability to increase profits from other sources. There is an expectation by the management that they must make so much profit. If all things failed to hit profit target, just raise fares. That is a sure fire way to meet profit target, and the easiest way to do so. The commuters must make up for the shortfall in profits.
It is not that the transport companies are making losses. In fact the profits are growing by the years, and in hundreds of millions. Can the transport companies absorb some of the cost with a little lesser profits in view of the higher fuel cost? Can the transport company pay lesser bonuses and lower salary increases to hold down cost?
Why is it that the transport companies are given the birth right to make profits and profits and millions of profits, and the commuters just have to pay?
For those people who are finding public transport unaffordable, please cut down on your travelling. Do not travel unnecessary if you don’t have to. Don’t go for bus ride or train rides just to pass time. Cycle, walk and find other means to amuse yourself. Take bus or trains only when necessary. Lower your expectations and live within your means. Transportation cannot be cheap with cost spiraling. In fact walking is good for health. Go for long walks, there is a new green corridor, from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands. Everyone is walking, for fun. Rich people also do that No need to take bus or train, and free fresh air too.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Is it a god damn right?
What makes the transport companies think that it is their god damn right to make millions in profits every year? And when profit is not enough, they simply apply to the LTA to raise fare? Is it a business that guarantees them profit year after year? Is there a business that has such a privilege status? Pow chiat business!
If they cannot make decent profit they should not be in the business and let someone else runs it. Don’t give the crap that they are answerable to the shareholders. They are answerable to the commuters too. Just because they are privatized, they can claime shareholders interests as the number one priority. Have they paid back the huge infrastructure cost of constructing the lines from public money?
In whatever guises, it is a public transport system and has a national duty to keep transportation cost low and to run efficiently. Making profit is secondary. The most important thing is that it is not running at a loss. For the last 10 to 20 years, how many billions have the transport companies been making, at about $200m to $300m annually?
It is time they think of the interests of the nation and the commuters. No business has a god damn right to be profitable year after year. Allow real competitors to run alternative routes and break down this monopoly.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Lui Tuck Yew defending the privatization of public transport
Lui Tuck Yew spoke against the Worker’s Party proposal to nationalize public transport. To him, the privatization formula works and if it is nationalized, it will become inefficient, non commuters will also have to pay and cost will go up and everyone ended paying more.
Assuming he is right, and I think he is. Look at the housing programme after it was privatized. Look at the medical care services after they are privatized, and transportation of course. All became world class and all so cheap and affordable. Ok, cannot say cheap, but affordable. If they were not privatized, the cost would have gone up even more and everyone paying more. Please be grateful that they are privatized.
And there will be no motivation for a nationalized public service to improve, except maybe the ministries. The ministries are not privatized, and presumingly running well. Or are they, like all non privatized organizations, running inefficiently and incurring more and more cost? In a nutshell, is the govt runnning efficiently without being privatized or it is running badly and incurring higher cost? If it cannot run efficiently without being privatized, then the govt/ministries should also be privatized.
Let’s move away from all these circular arguments that are self serving. Let’s ask a simple question. Can the transport companies continue to run, under the present system and staff, ceteris paribus, and don’t run into the red for another 3 years?
Another question, can the public transport companies operate with the current profit margin or lesser profit margin by ploughing back some profits to commuters and avoid another fare hike in the short term?
How much profit is enough for the privately run companies? Or is it a privately run company in the first place? Why is a minister defending a privately run company and its profits?
In my opinion, any able administrator could run the companies without raising fares for the next three years without making losses, unless fuel cost shot up dramatically.
So why the hurry to raise fare?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[Grunt]

[redbean]

The Devil’s Advocate
I am trying to put myself into the shoe of the devil and to understand his logic and motivation as the master planner of our transport system.
Let me start with cars for motorists. Being the devil, he would want to make as much money from the motorists as possible. These can come from road tax, PARF, ARF, petrol tax, car parking and even motor insurance. But the two schemes for easy money must be COEs and ERPs. For COEs, make sure that the supply is always limited. And this must be the easiest thing to do and all the right justifications given the space constraint. The pumping in of more foreigners is a god sent backup that would ensure that the number of cars on the road would always be critical. Then play on the rich who are able to afford to pay more and more to have the roads for themselves. At the same time tell those who cannot afford to take public transport. At $50k per piece of paper, without production cost, negligible manpower and material cost, what a sure win formula.
As for ERPs, just keep shifting the gantry points. Another easy scheme to make money. Put up one and shift the jam to the next bottle neck. That would be good justification for a new ERP. And when the jam builds up at the peripheral roads, more good reasons to erect more ERPs. It is kind of a never ending opportunity to make more money by simply putting up money collecting points.
What about public transport system? Just make it look good but never allow it to undermine the price of COEs and people wanting to drive their own cars. What does it mean? Don’t make it too comfortable or cheap enough as a substitute. It must look like a substitute, but weighing all the costs and inconvenience, the motorists will still want to pay the $50k COEs and the multiple ERPs to get around.
Also, it will increase the profits if the buses or trains are packed like sardines. It will be maximization of every inch of available space, for the same number of drivers and trains or buses.
The public transport system and the availability or convenience of private transport must be carefully managed to give the best yield in terms of profits. The ability for both systems to lay the golden eggs must not be undermined.

The above scenario is only valid in the minds of the devil. Luckily we have a good govt constantly trying to improve public transportation and to minimize the cost for the good of the people. And a minister had to pay the price for the people’s unhappiness in public transport. Actually it is very unfair. Why remove a minister who have made our transport system world class? The same logic should apply to our world class healthcare system that made Boon Wan an icon.

We now have a new minister who even tried to feel how it is to travel in public transport, off peak and during peak hours. More improvements will be on the way.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

My second daft Singaporean story for the day
Transport fares are going up, as sure as the sun will rise. This law is more permanent and unyielding than the law of gravity. So what can the Singaporeans do? KPKB is one thing. The next logical thing in the daft Singaporean mind is to say, fare goes up we want to see improvement in services. If no improvement, cannot.
So they are willing to concede to have more fare hikes if there is improvement in services. And they are still complaining that the service quality is bad. Now what does this mean? After 10 or 20 fare hikes, the same daft Singaporeans demanding that service quality be improved and the promises that fare hikes would lead to improvements, and what is the situation now?
Was there any improvement in the service quality after every fare hike? Or would this call for improvement be just a lip service that the daft Singaporeans sought to appease themselves, that there is nothing else they could do? If I were the operator, I will simply say the fare hike will improve the service quality.
Come next year, ask for fare hike to improve quality again. Imagine if there were 20 fare hikes and really 20 times improvement in quality, our transport services must be the best in the world. What or where were the improvements after every fare hike?
But of course, this time the call for fare hike is not to improve service quality but due to higher cost, petrol, manpower and also new buses. Ok, the later could be related to better services, with new and more comfortable buses. But the main part is higher cost. So what is this call about improving services?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

So a fare hike of 1% instead of 2.8%

Rejoice, celebrate, the unhappiness of the people has been heard. The PTC must have taken heed of the general unhappiness of the people over the rising cost of living and came out with a smaller increase for public transport fare. A 2c increase per trip is negligible and well absorbed, may even be unnoticeable. There are still complaints. People are still unhappy.

The PTC quoted the profits of other private companies including non transport operators, to justify the increase. Other organisation’s profits ranged from 3 to 14.9%. These include companies like Hongkong’s Transport International and MTR, London’s Stagecoach Group. SembCorp Industries and Singpost. And the profits of SBS and SMRT were 7.8 to 11.2%, very reasonable and within the spread of the companies quoted.

There is no point trying to go into the details of the little data provided. For those who are sceptical, doubts on the credibility and relevance of the data are glaring. I could quote more transport companies and non transport companies running at a loss to justify that it is ok to run public transport companies at a loss or with little profit.

What is still seen as wrong or unacceptable with the minimal increase? What is 2c when people are earning millions? The issue here is the principle of public transport and how this is treated as any other organisation whose interest is profit. And the operators deserved to be making profits like any other organisation.

Is public transportation with the privileges of a monopoly attached, to operate without competition, any other organisation? A govt run public transport monopoly is a govt monopoly under any colour or stripe. And a public transport system is an essential service and should not quickly be swept away as any other business for profit.

Why is the govt so obsessed with the public transport companies making profit as its major concern to shareholders, and coming out to defend its right to such profits? Why is the govt so persistent in proclaiming that the govt officers are daft and unable to run a public transport system if it is returned as a stats board? It is unbelieveable that any govt would say such a darn thing, that they could not run a transport service unless it is run privately. What a profound statement to acknowledge an inadequacy in a govt filled with top talents. I just dunno what to say.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A good cause to support PAP
It was so rare that I have to support a cause promoted by the PAP in recent years. Now there is really a good cause for all Singaporeans to support the PAP. Why is it good, it affects Singaporeans in general, some directly, some indirectly.
The PAP Youth Wing or Young PAP is going to the Speakers Corner this Saturday to speak up for lowering of transport fares for polytechnic and university students. These students, still not working and have no official income, are paying twice what college students are paying for MRT and SBS fares. They are still not financially independent and many would need support from their parents. Reducing their transport cost will help to alleviate the burden of their parents albeit in a small way. It still counts over the 3 to 4 years when they are studying.
It is good that the Young PAP is pushing for this cause. It is a cause that all Singaporeans regardless of their political inclination can share and support. Though the Young PAP has called for people turning up at Hong Lim to wear white, a symbol of cleanliness, incorruptibility and everything that is good, some have been peeved by this. I say never mind. The WP supporters can go there in their reds, some in blue, some in orange, some in pink, but all with a common goal, to fight for the lowering of fares for these students.
It will be an opportune time for all the parties to unite and tell the people that they can support a righteous and good cause no matter who raises the issue. And that all the parties will not bicker unnecessarily just because someone else and not themselves brought it up. It will show to the people that the politicians and their supporters are growing up.
I hope all the parties, PAP, NSP, SDP, WP, PKMS, SPP, SDA and any other party that I could not remember and mention, could go to Hong Lim Park this Saturday and make enough noise to support this good cause. It will be a moment when all Singaporeans are united, to stand as one.
Would that be nice?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.