Singapore: Everything the best?
Saturday, March 15, 2008
For goodness Singapore, improve your public transport system.
There have been many complaints about buses arriving much later than they are supposed to, and people having to wait for 3-4 buses before they could actually board it. I'm not at all surprised.
Take a look at the bus I take everyday, 174. If you were to take the bus before 8am, then the bus comes every 5-10 minutes. Fair enough. But if you were to take the bus after 8am, which is still considered peak hour for some, you can easily wait up to 20-30minutes at the bus interchange. And you will have long queues at bus stops, the entire journey get slowed down, and people cant board the bus.
I wonder where do those extra buses disappear to.
Cut the crap about meeting demand (because they are NOT meeting it), and just supply more buses! Build more if there isn't enough! The public should come before profits, really.
Then there is the simply ridiculous rule in the CBD area, which states that you can't alight or board taxis anywhere. You can only do so at designated taxi stands. Apparently this won't work, because the CBD area is too big to be covered by taxi stands that are within 300m walking distance. The thing is, the LTA refuses to admit that they have made a wrong move, and insist on working with relevant authorities...yada yada. It not only affects Singaporeans, but tourists as well. And to think Singapore aims to attract more tourists by the year...
Fine with the public transport system. Now tertiary education.
The fight for places in the 3 universities in Singapore is getting more and more intense, because poly grads are fighting for them as well. Some guy on the newspaper actually said that we should consider the not-so-popular courses as well; he cited the example of graduates from the science faculty being able to find jobs in the financial sector. Then may I ask, what is the point of studying a subject you have no interest in when eventually your career is in another field? Just for the degree?
What a successful education system we have here. (Applause)