Month: July 2010

Random Discourse – Floods & Engineering

7 comments

I found the following letter to the ST Forum while going through this forum thread on ION Orchard:

Preserve open space at Orchard MRT station
25 Aug 05

In his National Day Rally speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke at length about the development of the Orchard Road, Bras Basah Road and Bugis Junction areas.

Old Photo

Orchard MRT (pre-ION Orchard days)

In particular, he said that the development of the Bras Basah Road area with the relocation of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and Singapore Management University there was to bring back students to re-create the buzz which he remembered as his old school was in that area.

However, what has happened to the old buildings there? They have become museums, and a landmark cathedral has been converted to serve as restaurants and pubs.

PM Lee presented a slide showing an imposing tower being built on the green hill behind Orchard MRT station. Would the prime minister in 40 years’ time then decide that there is not enough open space in the Orchard Road area and have a few obsolete buildings torn down?

Take New York, one of the cities PM Lee mentioned. Smack in the centre of Manhattan Island is prime property, ideal for all sorts of buildings, yet the early town planners literally carved out a huge section of the city for Central Park. In the Singaporean context, it would be considered a waste.

But it is not. The open space that is now Ngee Ann City is lost. The open space that was behind Wisma Atria is lost. The open space between Bras Basah Road and Stamford Road is lost. The Botanic Gardens is too inaccessible from Orchard Road.

The Orchard MRT station’s open space should be preserved. Must everything prime be built upon? Let us learn from the lessons of the evacuation of the Bras Basah Road area.

Michael Loh Yik Ming

Ultimately, the Urban Redevelopment Authority [URA] awarded that open space to a group led by CapitaLand Ltd which submitted the top bid of S$1.38 billion. A follow-up post revealed that the developers need to borrow S$1.56 billion in their bid to build Orchard Road’s biggest monument to consumerism. I wonder whether all of that money is subjected to GST. *chuckles*

Anyway, the PUB first blamed a blockage at the culvert (or whatever) in the Stamford Canal for the flood on June 16. When it flooded again on July 17, it then declared that even the capacity of the canal is found wanting. While the canal is an integral part of Orchard Road’s drainage system, ensuring that the canal is free from obstruction and improving its capacity may not be the complete solution to the problem. After all, the entire problem may not actually lie with the Stamford Canal itself. Is the PUB ignoring the entire system of drains feeding into it, and also the effect of surrounding developments to the flow of water into the canal? (I’ll get to that in awhile.)

Of course, it is not surprising that some have fingered ION Orchard as the cause of the recent Orchard Floods. I agree with them somewhat, since I believe that the small knoll originally in its place (on top of Orchard MRT Station) has a part to play in restricting the flow of water towards the Orchard Road / Scotts Road / Patterson Road junction. However, ION Orchard is only part of the problem.

Moving along Orchard Road, one would notice that there are several other notable changes as well, and the majority of them happened along a rare unconcealed stretch of the mostly concealed Stamford Canal. First of all, the redevelopment of the 30-year-old UOL Building. Next, Specialists’ Center and Hotel Phoenix is also redeveloped and two plots beside it which were previously car parks are now Orchard Central and 313 Somerset. Orchard Central in specific has concealed even more of the Stamford Canal. (See the combined screen shots taken from Google Earth below).


Click for full sized

Just as I am sure the sale of that 2 small plots for building 313 Somerset and Orchard Central would have put at least another billion into the government’s gahmen’s coffers, I dare wager that if there had been no changes to the surrounding area in the past 10 years, a well maintained and unobstructed Stamford Canal would probably have drained water at its designated capacity and kept the entire Orchard Road area dry.

In fact, forummer y2koh in this thread somewhat echoed the same opinion (though our conclusions are very different). He wrote that the reason for all these ‘flash floods’ (or ‘freak floods’) in any area may perhaps be the result of all the new property development in the vicinity. A few areas like Telok Kurau, Katong, Upper Thomson, Bt Timah, Balestier Road etc were mentioned to emphasise the point. I would like to add another: Commonwealth Avenue.

Now, anyone who regularly take a westbound MRT train towards Joo Koon will notice that the open field before Faith Methodist Church is now a multi-storey car park, and the old Tanglin Tech school compound is now several blocks of 40-storey HDB apartments. There used to be a large uncovered monsoon drain behind that car park, but it is now concealed to expand Tanglin Halt Road. (See the combined screen shots of the area taken from Google Earth.)


Click for full sized

Guess what? Not long after these HDB ‘skyscrapers’ were completed (around 2007), Commonwealth Avenue was flooded in 2008 according to these videos I found on Youtube [1] [2]. So the assertion that the cause of all these floods have very little to do with climate change or global warming maybe right.

Bearing that in mind, I’ll like to respond to a comment Lao Lee recently made regarding the floods before I end this post. I quote:

At the same time, whatever we do when we get extraordinary rains like we had recently, no amount of engineering can prevent flooding.

There’s a limited amount of space that’s been dug underground, limited amount of space you can run off for canals and if you have an extraordinary rainfall, well you got to prepare for it.

Somethings are beyond (that); it’s an act of God unless you want to lose half the roads and have canals.” – Lao Lee, 21-07-2010

I agree absolutely with Lao Lee that no amount of engineering can prevent all these floods, because no engineering may actually be required at all. Lao Lee is also right that we may have to lose half the roads for drains to alleviate the problem… in my opinion those roads which the pea-brains in the PWD or whatever had built on top of exposed monsoon / storm drains and canals! Well, perhaps we never needed those roads in the first place if the goons in the LTA can stop getting high from all the *ka-chings* coming from the COEs and ERP gantries.

Old Photo

313 Somerset construction site

Anyway, I have a rather simplistic view of this entire matter. In my opinion, if the Stamford Canal is blocked the immediate area upstream of the blockage will be inundated first. Otherwise, Malaysia’s claim that the floods in the upper reaches of Sungai Johor was the result of Singapore’s land reclamation around Pulau Tekong would actually be credible!

Next, if Stamford Canal is over-capacity, wouldn’t flooding occur along the banks where it is not concealed – i.e. parts of Somerset Road near UOL Building or parts of Orchard Road after Plaza Singapura? Is the area between Liat ‘JiaLat’ Towers and Lucky Plaza anywhere near the blocked culvert or any unconcealed portions of Stamford Canal?

My limited knowledge of water dynamics tells me that water always flow along the easiest path towards the lowest point. In my opinion, when 313 Orchard and Orchard Central were still nothing more but car parks, water flows unimpeded from Orchard Road (through them) into Stamford Canal. If not, they would have at least served the function of sinks (like the car park outside the KTM Station at Tanjong Pagar) for some of the run offs coming from Orchard Road itself. Now that 313 Orchard and Orchard Central has taken up the usual path that the water will take, it will simply flow along the widest open stretch in that area – Orchard Road itself – towards the lowest point in that area, the junction of Orchard Road / Scotts Road / Patterson Road. Even though I am not a civil engineer and I could be wrong about this, my opinion is that Orchard Road itself now serves as a shallow ‘instant storm drain’ for some of that water because it can’t find a better place to go!

Old Photo

Tanglin Halt monsoon drain: concealment underway

To emphasise my point, I’ll talk about Commonwealth Avenue again. With the open field now a multi-storey car park and part of the monsoon train concealed, most of the run off now end up in and overwhelm the 2-decade-old drains along Commonwealth Avenue. When overwhelmed, water that previously drains off from Commonwealth Avenue can go nowhere else except the road itself.

Simply put, the recent rains are not extraordinary. The meteorological services has not shown us that rainfall has hit a historical new high. The only engineering we need to look into, is all that mindless ‘civil engineering’ as a result of the endless property development in Singapore. All of these craps that the Tali-PAP gahmen and the so-called top talent multi-million mini$ter$ have given to Singaporeans are simply lame. When no serious study has been committed to look into the problem, it is difficult to believe any of their statements hold any water at all!

For too long has the Tali-PAP gahmen been short on accountability and grossly overpaid. Now it even dared to redefine its own ‘job description’ and tried to worm itself out of part of the job that is expected of them with nothing more than mere words that is not backed up with any concrete evidence. It is way past due time for a ‘regime change’ at the ballot box. After all, as an employee I would be fired by my boss if I can choose to do only the part of the job I liked (or do best) and disregard the rest. That, is obviously what this gahmen is now doing with regard to the floods.

Satire – Why we shouldn’t be building more drains

5 comments

Our Prime Mini$ter, Baby Lee said any attempt to eradicate flooding in Singapore would require plenty of money and land.

“If you are going to do that, you will need huge tracts of land put aside for huge monsoon drains, which will be empty most of the time, (and) the infrastructure will cost a lot of money and it is not worth it,” he said, speaking in the wake of the recent flash floods here.

I am impressed. Our Prime Minister has the superpower of prescience to know that it would take plenty of money and land to deal with the floods all over Singapore in just barely over a month. It almost certainly make me felt his S$3 million annual salary is worth it. All lesser mortals would have committed the PUB and the relevant mini$try to study and come up with plans on how to deal with the situation before they are capable of coming to that conclusion. Just imagine how much more money it would have cost us to conduct such a study?

In fact, it is more worth it for land to be released to build golf courses in Singapore. It is a fact that there isn’t enough land for golf courses because the Marina Bay Golf Course has to be built on reclaimed land. It really doesn’t matter the golf courses are also technically empty most of the time and they benefit only the rich. They are a such pretty sight when they aren’t in use during inclement weather. Just imagining the misty rain and grassland gave me an orgasm already. 9 golf courses on the main island of Singapore (not including the one in Sentosa) definitely is not enough. Forget about the environmental impact of golf courses, specifically the amount of water, chemical pesticides and fertilizers used for its maintenance. We will be watering them all with Newater, and NEA will monitor the level of chemical pesticides and fertilizers used to ensure they will not be harmful to Singaporeans.

Don’t forget that cost and profit is paramount in all decisions of the Tali-PAP government gahmen. Singapore, Inc is run just like any other corporation! If something would cost and not profit, the decision will certainly be a irrevocable no. That is why a lot of the old guard of the Tali-PAP no longer hold any position these days. They would have gone ahead with building the drains and paid the cost. That would be costly and unprofitable.

In fact, other than selling land to clubs to build more golf courses which catered to the rich, it is even more profitable to sell the land to a developer to turn it into more blocks of soulless apartments or shopping malls. Worse come to worst, the land can still be ‘sold’ to the HDB to turn into more ‘affordable housing’ which still take the entirety of many Singaporeans’ useful, working life to pay off. They would be daft to complain about this!

So, the car owners, home owners and shop owners can deal with the recurring cost of damage cost by the floods on their own. There is no way that can cost more than the gahmen to pay a one time cost to eliminate the problem entirely. All of Singapore Inc’s money are belong to the Tali-PAP. The Tali-PAP will decide how the money will be better spent. After all, the MAS can ‘create’ more out of thin air with the stroke of a pen and have the Singapore Mint made them.

It is not ironical that in spite of real rainy weather the gahmen will not even use a cent from the reserves to deal with the situation. That money is better used by Temasek and GIC to buy into money-losing American and European Investment banks. Be grateful they are ‘making losses’. Because if they did not buy high and sell low, more jobs maybe lost. By doing so, Singapore is helping put more money into the global markets and economy to fight the credit crunch and prevent a double dip recession. America will be happy and it will sell us more of their high tech weaponary which will keep us safe.

That is why we definitely can’t spend that money on drains! The more I think of it, the more I am moved to tears. They are tears of joy in knowing what a caring and responsible gahmen we have.

Random Discourse – Floods & A Handcuffed Reporter

2 comments

It was quite shocking when I saw this on Saturday’s evening tabloids. It’s not the reporter who got handcuffed that got my attention (though I’ll get back to that in awhile) but the so-called freak floods that happens every fifty years or so has happened again in less than fifty days. It’s not only the usual places like Bukit Timah that is flooded but Orchard, and it was exactly one month ago that Orchard Road turned into Sungei Orchard.

If God Himself is making a statement that He objects to being blamed for the floods, He certainly has a sense of humor. Though those who have a part to play and has suffered in His current ‘drama’ would hardly find it humorous.

I felt especially sorry for Wendy’s, which is under renovation after incurring S$500,000 in damages from last month’s flood. It was once again submerged in waist-deep water. Liat Towers clearly need to get some civil engineers in to study the viability of installing some kind of pump system to pump the water out into the sewage system during heavy rain since it is no use pumping back onto the drainage system when it has overflowed. I am actually tempted to ask the meteorological services to provide the public past records in which the same amount of rainfall was experienced, so we can see for ourselves whether similar flooding has occurred. Just why has our local press not taken the initiative to do this for our information once again points to the sub-par journalism standards in this country. It makes one wonder whether revealing the historical records would put certain departments or mini$tries or people in a very difficult position – such as revealing that the storms causing these so called ‘freak floods’ are not so uncommon after all. In fact, a rather bad tropical storm called Vamei hit us back in December 2001 and I remember that it went on raining for days. None of us were even informed we were hit by one of the worst storms in the history of Singapore and according to these records, Vamei was even classified as a Typhoon before it landed in Johor. Most of us probably still reported to work that day and I recalled seeing many ruined umbrellas in the trash can outside the office building one particular morning. Was there any floods in Orchard then? I have extracted the data related to Vamei from the site for easy reference (see below).


To understand the data format click here.

Just what excuse will Yaacob Ibrahim give this time round after the PUB cleared the blockage at that culvert or whatever? Perhaps some contractor didn’t do a good job, eh? After being paid a million dollars for his alleged talent, the million dollar mini$ter cannot expect us to be forgiving or patient in the face of such repeated fiascos. He and the well paid civil servants serpents under him do not need me to tell them to quit blaming the ‘freak weather’ for all these woes and instead take a hard look at the change of landscape in those areas and do a detailed study on what effect those changes brought to the area. To quote one of the tenants of Delfi Orchard, Ms Shanta Sundarason:

“So much for the ‘once in 50 years freak flood’ along Orchard Road. It would be nice for the problem to be addressed and dealt with, rather than a sweeping statement from the ministry.”

Singaporeans should give Shanta Sundarason a standing ovation for being forthright even though her response is still rather mild. In ancient China, the reason for the occurrence of such disasters is obvious: those in power has lost the Mandate of Heaven and until they atone for all their sins, the punishment will continue. Do not let Heaven wait too long, for when it makes the decision to pass the Mandate to another the reckoning that follow will definitely not be pleasant.

In ancient Japan, I will have given the mini$ter a katana, and he can use any public park for his final act of atonement (in traditional samurai fashion) to his dismal failure. In modern days however, there would normally be an outrage and a loud outcry for blood. When the disaster relief effort was badly managed after Typhoon Morakot hit Taiwan in 8 Aug 2009, the entire cabinet there subsequently resigned. In Singapore, all the people can do is complain (or make #FAIL posters, or make songs about it) and then just dream on. We can’t even get the responsible mini$try to admit to the failure and we can definitely forget about even getting the mini$ter in charge of it to be accountable.

From the escape of Mas Selamat to the losses suffered by town councils ‘investing’ their sinking funds, from the failure to control runaway property prices to failure to successfully deal with our public transport and traffic woes, the accountability we have gotten from the highest levels here is as good as a big fat zero. When one considers that being accountable does not seem to be part of the requirement, I am tempted to agree with a Dr. Ng Eng Hen Ng Eng Eng that all our mini$ter$ are value for money even while some might say we should pay them lesser because of that.

This is the kind of caring and responsible government gahmen we are getting. To them, good economic performance and economic indicators is all about good governance. The other things are deemed insignificant. That is not a surprise since economic indicators would be the justification to the mini$ter$ own remuneration! It probably never occurred to them that even though a good economy ensure jobs for most people and indirectly the economic well being of Singaporeans, there is more to living than just having a job and money to go around. If economic performance the only indicator on how well this country is run, we should do away with all the other ministries except one – the one who will make the economic policies and ‘run’ the economy.

Now, let me get back to the part about the poor reporter. From what I understand, anybody convicted of ‘interfering’ with the police carrying out its ‘public duty’ will be sentenced to a jail term no less than three years or fined up to $2,500 or both. However, I have yet to find an official press statement (under ‘News Releases’) on the Singapore Police Force website on this matter even though the Temasek Review claimed that such a statement has been released. Perhaps I was looking at the wrong place though I would have expected this well established people journalist site to have linked the press statement for our reference.

It makes me wonder if the poor sod was dealt with that way as a subtle warning to all the ‘people journalists’ out there that those who report on news that is negative to Singapore’s image should desist ‘for their own good’. After all, I see no reason why the Lianhe Wanbao [联合晚报] reporter Wu Qing Shun [吴庆顺] should be treated that way from the newspaper report.

The newspaper report cited that Wu arrived at an affected area along Upper Bukit Timah around 7am. When Wu attempted to find a better angle to take a photo of a vehicle trapped in the flood he was stopped by a police officer. Even though he has politely asked to take one more photo, the police officer handcuffed him and threatened to take him to the station. According to an article on the Temasek Review, the police claimed that Mr Wu was handcuffed as he was posing a ‘danger’ to himself and others. He was released after ‘assessment’ which confirmed that he would not ‘hinder’ the police’s ‘rescue operations’.

There is a major contradiction between the newspaper report and the article on the Temasek Review – i.e. the newspaper report did not indicate that Wu was posing any danger to anyone or himself while the Temasek Review reference to a police release spoke about Wu endangering his own life and that of others. What sort of ‘danger’ has Wu placed himself and other people in? Unless Wu was already in a position of grave danger, the police officer should spend more time explaining why he should desist and leave. Was Wu already way ahead into a dangerous position and the police officer has moved forward to advise Wu to move back to somewhere safer? After all, if Wu was handcuffed because he is in a position where was posing a ‘danger’ to himself and others, then the police officer is also in danger and he has every right to use limited force to not just safeguard the life of Wu but that of himself.

Beside that, I am under the impression that all rescue operations were conducted by the SCDF (Singapore Civil Defense Force) and not the police. It was my understanding that the job of the police to cordon off any dangerous areas from the general public so this so-called police release is rather puzzling. That is the reason why I am making such a fuss over the linking of the police’s press release.

At this moment, I find both of these reports equally deplorable as they do not really give the general public the necessary and important information. It has left the public with more questions than answers and the only objective it has served was to give everyone the impression of police brutality or at the very minimum, a misuse of police authority.

Daily Discourse – Outsourcing Went Bad

4 comments

The failure of DBS Bank’s electronic banking services reminds me of an incident that is rarely known by the public but told to me by a friend who is a UNIX administrator. It was a classic example of outsourcing went bad. The following is the account of the incident, but the names of the company and the internationally acclaimed vendor are changed (for obvious reasons).

This is the story:

It was during one fine night shift, when a data centre operator delete *.* accidentally. According to her own confession, she thought she was deleting files in a folder. Unfortunately for her, she was actually in the root directory when she did so. (For the uninitiated, the root directory is sort of like the main trunk of the tree. In short, while she thought she was cutting off a useless branch, she had actually chopped the whole tree down.)

The result of her action was disastrous. She effectively wiped out the OS and the mount-points on the SANs etc. Almost 4.3 TB (Terabytes – i.e. 4 x 1012 bytes) of files were deleted. Unlike the command prompt in Windows, where one can terminate a bad command with CTRL-C or CTRL-BREAK or close it down with Task Manager, a command executed in UNIX just keep going until the job is done.

So, even if she had realised her mistake and tried to stop it, she can’t. 23 Servers all across MNC X which were connected to the same SAN volumes (all affected by her erroneous command) went down immediately. Slowly the other servers were affected. The final ‘body count’: 168 servers of MNC X in that data centre were affected. The end result, nobody from any country, in any outlets / offices, could connect back to MNC X. It is simply an IT Black Day.

Best of it all, this happened somewhere around midnight and that gave the operator time to cover up what she did. She quickly modified whatever log files she has access to and deleted all her entries. So when the monitoring system (which is miraculously still functional) sent alerts to the ‘owners’ of each affected system, the tech guys who were awaken discovered to their own dismay they couldn’t login remotely (since theirs servers are all down). They were left with no choice but to drag their tired bodies back on site.

It took all of them almost 3 hours to be back on site, and they found no trace of what happened and could only scratch their heads since the log files were manipulated. Even more puzzling was that the redundancy failed – the backup systems had not kick in.

To cut the long story short, MNC X was left with no choice but to restore from backups so they can bring all their systems back online. It was over 15 hours later before they finally restored some semblance of order to the entire IT infrastructure. Meantime, Vendor Y launched an investigation and ultimately a guru in UNIX administration discovered the log files manipulations and even found out exactly who did it.

The saddest part of it all was that MNC X never discover the truth, even though MNC X probably also lost millions that day since it also has offices in other parts of the world which is still running. According to Vendor Y’s findings, the reason why the redundant systems didn’t kick in was a result of the backup systems being too old and they no longer matched the same configuration as the primary systems. (Doesn’t that sound almost as ridiculous as the reason DBS gave in their official statement – an upgrade – as to the cause of the break down of ALL their electronic banking services?)

That was of obviously the many droppings of a bull’s behind. After all, any IT technical person worth his salt would have asked what the heck vendor Y has been doing if it has not implemented hardware and / or software upgrades to the redundant systems to keep them up to date! They would have taken the vendor to court and sue them for a substantial amount of damages.

The story gets even better from here. The culprit was totally untouched because she has been Vendor Y’s perm staff for 20 over years. Instead, a contract staff was made the scapegoat and fired to appease MNC X.

What is most ultimate to this sad story of outsourcing went bad was that the contract staff who got fired was one of the three UNIX gurus who discovered who altered the damned logs. I personally suspect that the story doesn’t end here. Vendor Y probably convinced MNC X and sold it yet another several million dollar worth of hardware to ‘make sure this will never happen again’. (Note: The part about the vendor profiting from this fiasco is just my own speculation, not that it actually happened.)

When I looked at the magnitude of the staggering damage caused by Vendor Y in this major fxxk-up, the lack of dedication of the staff hired by the vendor which my current employer outsourced some of its IT services to paled by comparison. After all, the minor delays caused by these morons who simply didn’t put themselves in the shoes of our business users is nothing compared to what MNC X suffered in that one single morning.

Commentary – Distance Based Fare System

6 comments

I personally really have no clue how the Public Transport Council [PTC] conclude that 2/3 of commuters will see their transport fare goes down while the remaining 1/3 will see an increase in their fares.

I noticed in Twitter and Facebook many comments that their fares have gone up but I didn’t really take pay close attention. It was after fellow blogger DK put up his blog post, I decided to use gothere.sg and calculate my fare. I thought I should just verify what he wrote for my own good if I wanted to pass on the information to another person.

The result was utterly shocking!! I am also among the 1/3 which will see my fare rise from $1.51 to $1.62. It’s a 11 cents (almost 7.3%) increment per trip (left). Based on a 22-day work month, that is about another $4.84 a month ($58.08 a year – which would be better if I gave it to a charity that allows me 250% tax reduction per dollar contributed). That makes the two of us among the 1/3 who are paying more per trip. Basically, if you can travel directly from point to point without making a transfer, you are out of luck!!

The devil is clearly in the details, and the PTC has done a very good job this round to sugar-coat the poison package this fare increment to stamp out commuter outrage. Meantime, trains are still coming at deplorable intervals after this hidden fare increment and they are usually still packed to the brim while bus bunching remain rampant – especially in the recently prevalent rainy conditions.

To make sure my anger is ‘justified’, I checked with a few other people and I realised that if you are able to travel from your home to your workplace without any need to transfer, your fare can go up even a staggering 17.4% (12 cents). This is the case for a school teacher who lives just a few stops away from where she stayed (see below). For her to reduce her fare increase to just 2 cents, she will have to take the feeder bus which takes her on a tour around the estate a roundabout route before reaching her destination. (She also pointed out that the calculation on gothere.sg may differ from that of publictransport.sg, so you might want to also check it out when doing your calculations.)

The only exception is when I checked with Nicole who needs to make two transfers and she saved 25cents a trip. The fare dropped from $2.10 to $1.85 (see below). While I was going to congratulate her for being among the so-called 2/3 of commuters who are saving on travelling, she pointed out to me that it is ridiculous that the transport fare system would punish her if she chooses to wake up early to walk to the MRT station. In fact, she also pointed out that the only time she gained is when she shuttles between home and work, but it will be even more expensive for her to travel directly without transfer from point to point.

It wasn’t long both of us came to the conclusion that this new fare system seems to suggest that you ‘waste time to save money’. I did a calculation based on a hypothetical journey where instead of walking from home to the MRT, I take a feeder to the MRT station for just ONE bus stop instead. And viola, I was surprised that that trip actually cost me $1.71 under the old system, but only $1.64 now. In the past when I walk to the MRT station, it would only cost me $1.51 and gives me a healthier lifestyle. Now it costs me $1.62 to do the same and if I wanted to fool myself that I have reduced my fare by a imaginary 7 cents (from $1.71 to $1.64), I have to forsake my walk to and from the station not to mention it would take me an estimated 5 minutes more in travelling time.

So, whatever happened to the advantage of staying near an MRT station or finding a workplace that is convenient? Is there even now a point of buying property near an MRT station? Whatever happened to a healthier lifestyle? Why are people penalised for walking to the MRT station?

I managed to bother yet another friend to do the fare calculation down over at gothere.sg and publictransport.sg, and it managed to reinforce my opinion that one should find a workplace that takes as many transfer as possible (see below). Do take specific note that the comparison here between the gothere.sg results and that of publictransport.sg is provided here as a rough comparison because gothere.sg suggested to her the supposed ‘shortest’ way to get to her destination while she took one that reduces the walking distance.

I suppose now I have a even better reason to jack up the price of my unit near the MRT station because it actually cost me more to travel using public transport, in spite of the convenience of it being nearby.

By the way, I was told that Saw “Phiak Phiak” (SMRT CEO) responded that “I never said that I didn’t recognise it’s crowded… I accept it’s crowded. The point is, in comparison with others, we’ve yet to push people into the train,” referring to Japan and some parts of China.

Is she even aware that most large cities in China have a larger population than Singapore, not to mention that Tokyo is the largest metropolis in the world if I am not wrong? If she isn’t aware of these facts, she probably deserves to get her ass “phiak phiak’ed”. Just which moron put this ignoramus as CEO of one of Singapore’s public transport company? I felt almost vindicated because I mentioned this in my previous post:

“The above statement gives me the impression that if you can legally do it, you would have us all pushed in every single train the way wool is stuffed into a pillow.”

Addendum
It is my considered opinion that while it maybe technically true that ‘2/3 of the people benefits’ from this new fare system, it creates the impression that 1/3 of the people is made to pay more to ‘subsidise’ 2/3 of the rest. Now I wouldn’t really care if car owners or the more affluent are made to ‘subsidise’ public transport users, but how 1/3 of people who use public transport – who I generally do not consider rich – are made to ‘subsidise’ the other 2/3 is beyond me.

Besides, I am still in the opinion that the entire system is ill-conceived and commuters who make regular short trips – for e.g. to take lunch at a hawker centre slightly further away from the workplace, to meet friends after work near the office, to the mall or supermarket at the city central to buy some stuff, or children taking public transport to school – he will end up paying more and some of that will go towards eroding whatever savings from the regular / daily transfers made from those trips requiring them. After all, if I understand it correctly, basic fares has gone up from 69cts to 71cts across the board for anything under 3km. That’s no mentioning that if you have elderly dependents or children, their concessionary fares also go up accordingly. It really doesn’t matter if one enjoyed going to godforsaken places where ‘birds do not lay eggs and dogs do not shit’ every now and then, and have several transfers showing $0 or $0.01 to give an orgasm. Just make sure one made enough money when young so they won’t feel sorry about the fare during the last few years of life.

Basically there is really not much we can do about it except to bitch about it, or just ‘suck it up’ as this blog post suggests.

Personally speaking, since the transport operators are on the PTC and I consider this action ‘a conflict of interest’ and ‘self rewarding’, I have no incentive to be civil-minded and to take any form of action should I see anyone vandalising and damaging their vehicles or equipment. Do I really care about the other commuter whose trip will be ruined if someone breaks the seat on the bus? Nah, he could be paying less because he needs to transfer while I end up with the short end to ‘subsidise’ him. What goes around simply… comes around. Not forgetting, it’s not like even if the buses are in tip top conditions they won’t be replaced for a long time. All of that replacement cost is always transferred to commuters so face it: It’s already factored in the next fare increment already.

Anyway, I have no long since ceased to believe members of the PTC (who are car owners, and definitely not use the public transports as often as most commuters do) will take note of the plight of most commuters and understand what is really required. It would be ironical when the day some form of distance based ERP system be adopted but it will be cold comfort to many commuters who has long suffered under this ridiculous fare system.

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