For more variety on our roads
For the 2nd time this year (right...technically half a year), my EZlink card malfunctioned. The only way to rectify this? Join the queues at the Transitlink offices which incidentally only plant themselves at the major stations (Serangoon doesn't count). And so it was back to using actual currency to get myself around places till I spot one of the abovementioned with queues attached to their front windows...
A month before, we noticed our pockets squirm a little when it was announced that we are paying too little for our way around Singapore. Now, how does anybody justify fare increases when you consider that:
1) our stations don't even have trash bins (and btw, our stations are spotless. Could it be because it's more cost-effective to hire a tiny army of auntie cleaners than have less animate trash collectors? *raised eyebrow*)
2) the bus and train companies are making healthy profits? Whatever happened to the fact that PUBLIC transportation is a PUBLIC good and that we pay taxes to use goods and services otherwise not reasonably provided by the private sector? You thought wrong: the S'pore government is not really a bunch of publicly-funded scholars enjoying private sector salaries - they are shrewd businessmen. They have you paying for something you already paid for (with your taxes). Wooooo...smart ones, they.
3) the original idea of having 2 public transport providers is to introduce competition to the domestic market (with no double-digit population figures that characterise good-sized cities, we can hardly boast of a domestic market,really). And what happens? You have bus routes ripped up just so the bus-loving sector of the population will realise that subterranean travel is best suited for them albeit a tad more costly. Oh,just a little...if you don't compound the increases ("adjustments", they call it!Ha!) in your transport expenses now.
4) of Transitlink offices and my EZlink card...
Unlike the Mediaworks and Mediacorp fiasco, any merger of the two transport biggies is really quite impossible. Look, they are not even direct competitors! They are laughing all the way to the bank. And they have people manning the unmanned trains. Yes, you are paying for their salaries because the trains need to be manned afterall.
Dude, where's my car???
A month before, we noticed our pockets squirm a little when it was announced that we are paying too little for our way around Singapore. Now, how does anybody justify fare increases when you consider that:
1) our stations don't even have trash bins (and btw, our stations are spotless. Could it be because it's more cost-effective to hire a tiny army of auntie cleaners than have less animate trash collectors? *raised eyebrow*)
2) the bus and train companies are making healthy profits? Whatever happened to the fact that PUBLIC transportation is a PUBLIC good and that we pay taxes to use goods and services otherwise not reasonably provided by the private sector? You thought wrong: the S'pore government is not really a bunch of publicly-funded scholars enjoying private sector salaries - they are shrewd businessmen. They have you paying for something you already paid for (with your taxes). Wooooo...smart ones, they.
3) the original idea of having 2 public transport providers is to introduce competition to the domestic market (with no double-digit population figures that characterise good-sized cities, we can hardly boast of a domestic market,really). And what happens? You have bus routes ripped up just so the bus-loving sector of the population will realise that subterranean travel is best suited for them albeit a tad more costly. Oh,just a little...if you don't compound the increases ("adjustments", they call it!Ha!) in your transport expenses now.
4) of Transitlink offices and my EZlink card...
Unlike the Mediaworks and Mediacorp fiasco, any merger of the two transport biggies is really quite impossible. Look, they are not even direct competitors! They are laughing all the way to the bank. And they have people manning the unmanned trains. Yes, you are paying for their salaries because the trains need to be manned afterall.
Dude, where's my car???
posted by Ming at 2:50 PM
2 Comments:
Well , Many mentioned that Singapore is being praised for being having good measures to prevent monopolism comparativly to Hong Kong ... but the actual fact that singapore is already being monopolised by the only business man.
at least everyone here gets a fair shared of the economy unlike Hong Kong everyone is working like shit to survive .
y ur blog machiam straits times huh ...
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