I had a meeting at Eunos. The GPS system in my car indicated that ERP cost $4.50. I decided to avoid ERP.
This was a bad idea. I went to pass many congested roads with slow moving traffic. The situation is as bad as Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur during the peak hours. A journey of 10 km took 1 hour.
I did not realise that the roads are so congested outside of the highways. So many people had to travel to work and spend a lot of wasted time and lost productivity. The situation is made worse by the construction works to build more roads and fly-overs.
The solution is to have better local services for the last mile and encourage more people to take public transport. Many people had to use private cars due to the poor public transport. It caused road congestion. Things have become quite bad in recent years.
Tan Kin Lian
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The road leading to Eunos either from serangoon or from bedok or hougang have been known to have terrible traffic conditions for more than 10 years actually during peak hours.(just that it has become worse in recent years)The new expressway is completely useless to reduce traffic if you do not want to pay ERP. MR Tan did you avoid the new KPE expressway?
ReplyDeleteAnyway Mr Tan have you gone on the trip to paris to scout about the automated car? Hope to see you blog about it soon.
I think a even better idea is to stagger working hours. For example, public transport and the roads at 2 pm to 4 pm are relatively congestion free.
ReplyDeleteBetter still, develop and create demand for 24 hour services. This will shift some of the load away from the daytime, and create some night life. Win-win for all.
I fully agreed with you.The long term solution is to significanly improve the public transportation.
ReplyDeleteAre we still want to remain as 3rd world ????
Yes, Singapore roads are unique. On the Expressways, it is almost always smarter to be in the left most lane. Yes, you have to over-take once in a while a very rule-abiding van/truck. Where in the world, do heavy vehicles flount speed limit and hog the middle lane and some time the right most lane ? Who cares about the Yellow boxes or knows how to use a traffic circle ? Do we have Traffic Police ?
ReplyDeleteMr Tan, perhaps u shd just incur the erp cos thats the whole idea of having erp in the 1st so that the route will be fairly accessiable under erp.
ReplyDeletew/o erp, the situation will be congested as per what had been experienced by ur gdself.
Honestly, even though garment has made high cost for owning a car so as to encourage public transport, there is always some easy way to get a car (From car loan, just $1 will do, no need to resort to GTA.)
ReplyDeleteSo I think the best way is while enforcing COE and possibly ERP, the main thing is that the car loan should not be available to most people.
Apart of this, actually more youngster @ poly - after NS age start learn driving. This would likely increase private cars and cause conjestion as well.
i wonder if mr raymond lim's ministry is aware of the real problems and the solutions. widening roads is one way, but does not solve the problem. all of us road users with eyes know all the reasons, but are our planners aware? erp is also not the other way!! even if one is willing to pay, we may not get the expected smooth drive.
ReplyDeleteI guess LTA's solution is to have more ERP gantries and charge ever more! They often claim that ERP on the highway has effectively improved traffic flow. I think they also know the ill effects led to the adjacent roads due to ERP. If you complain, they may put up ERP gates at the adjacent roads too. If the traffic goes back to the highway, their solution is to increase the ERP charges, and the escalation circle continues until you give up, and the problem is solved! I think the source of the problem is the BIG increase in population in recent years.
ReplyDeletei remember i used to enjoy our public transport. that was many years ago...
ReplyDeleteevery year, they say need to increase price to improve the svc. i believe them... but nothing has change...
they say not making money.. but management can keep big bonus and every year has earning growth...
i really really dun understand... i went hk recently, surprise to find that our world class public transport is not as world class... our cheap public transport is not as cheap...
Thats the observation I made too. Roads are more congested now. I try to rectify this problem by living near MRT and town. This reduces my travelling time. However, I have to bear with the standards of public transport.
ReplyDelete