Ok soon is a little late, sorry. The last post on Singapore's biggest problems required some explanation and here goes.
I was thinking about our recent SMRT technical fiascos as well as our ongoing issues with how crowded the trains were getting (this was the morning my mum made tea and banana pancakes out of the blue).
Keeping the rationalizations simple (because complicating them would confuse) the answers were:
- (track failures) someone wasn't checking for these problems or wasn't checking thoroughly or didn't care. Perhaps their bosses didn't care either.
- (overcrowding) the system was built to 1987 specs to optimal efficiency but without much room for redundancy. It's all too linear and unscalable. Scale now means building a new line. Also, with the push for new housing in certain areas plus more immigrants, it seems like the gahmen departments weren't talking to each other about the intersecting stresses on Singapore systems.
Who can we blame for all this? Ourselves.
We sort of let ourselves get carried away with the gahmen in the "They'll take care of everything, they know what they are doing" sort of way. I mean we were all kudos and applauding when the train lines opened but that's not the endgame. In fact there isn't one. It's forever, like diamonds but less sparkly. So we needed quite a bit of forward thinking in place. We knew back then we needed 5.5 or so million people to make the island work economically so why didn't we cater for that? Could we not envision the demand? We were not creative enough to figure out there wouldn't be space at Jurong East if we got more people to live in the west and northwest? Someone told me that the Japanese built Ginza station from the bottom up, meaning they dug 7 levels down first and built successive lines over that first deep-down station. What brilliant thinking. Anticipation is the hallmark of great planning. Efficiency with room to grow, that what we should have in place and aspire to.
My gripes/solutions with the train systems in Singapore:
- I can't figure why the Bukit Panjang LRT system was built when everyone was happy with the buses. If they wanted to spend $750 million on something through Bukit Panjang, how about a tunnel under the hill to link Ang Mo Kio to Choa Chu Kang with a bunch of stations across? This imaginary line from CCK to AMK could also stretch down Ang Mo Kio Ave 3 to Hougang, Defu and Ubi, roads that are still a mess at peak hours. At least then Serangoon North wouldn't get such a bad accessibility rep.
- Also, the envisioned line above could stretch westwards from CCK to NTU and Tuas, giving options to students at the university as well as workers now bound to use packed Boon Lay MRT/Interchange as their hub.
– I can't figure why the new Downtown Line being constructed from Bukit Panjang to Bugis doesn't start from Kranji or Choa Chu Kang. Wouldn't that help ease congestion into the city and ease the crowds gathering at Jurong East?
- Extra platforms and tracks were retrofitted to Jurong East MRT over the last two years to allow more parking space for trains from Woodlands and extra trains headed east. Did that help ease the human jam? I dunno but people are still complaining. Here's a thought - how about an extra pair of tracks running down from Jurong East to Buona Vista? Additional tracks to link the two major interchanges on the western line. This would give passengers spread-out options to switch lines at other stations instead of sardine-packing Jurong East. Also trains from Woodlands could continue straight on from Jurong East to Buona Vista, giving commuters headed to Harbourfront an easy switch at one stop. Alright, extend at least till Clementi so that commuters have two stops instead of one to switch at.
- Isn't Tanjong Pagar station busy enough to be an interchange? It is now and was even in 1987 when the EW line opened. Every work day hundreds of thousands of commuters have to make the one stop trip from Raffles Place to Tanjong Pagar to get to work in the city. I think that's just silly. If different lines can link across 3-4 stations in Central and Causeway Bay in Hong Kong island and in Tokyo, why could we implement this magnanimous, stress-reducing plan here? It would save commuters time and bring ease.
- We left Marina Bay station languishing for so long as a terminus. Now Harbourfront has become such a vibrant hub. Wouldn't it have be nicer to have the North South line stretch on to Harbourfront for easier connectivity. It would have been obvious to do so than to have had Marina Bay poorly utilised for a decade or so.
- The newly opened Circle Line benefits many who need to head down to the Suntec-Marina area. That's cool but the single point terminus at Dhoby Ghaut isn't. That's now a three line interchange, and consequently a people mess at peak hours and weekends. It would have been nice to extend the Circle Line crossover points further north up Orchard Road to alleviate the stress on Somerset and Orchard stations and end at Newton instead. This would allow suburbanites from the north heading to Suntec to switch earlier at Newton and not join the crowds at Dhoby Ghaut. (the future Downtown Line from Bukit Timah joins at Newton too, so these commuters would enjoy the same convenience too). There would have been the chance to add another station perhaps between Orchard and Somerset maybe behind Paragon or to extend the Circle Line towards Tanglin and Dempsey.
- You may already know how I feel about the Sengkang LRT system. If you don’t, I feel it’s dumb to centralize the connectivity just to one point at Sengkang Interchange. It would be wiser to even link up the same LRT service to Punggol, Sengkang and Hougang since most of the residents probably have shared interests in these adjacent estates.
There you go. My rant about the MRT system. They’re building more lines, of course. Nothing stops the big machine. Not sure if there’s more sense in them (I doubt). Having named a station Tan Kah Kee (like who? and where?) and allowing Farrer Park and Farrer Road stations to co-exist already has me shaking my head.
So with all these complaints, it makes our problems quite clear, no? Over-reliance on the gahmen for ideas, no one really putting forward alternative ideas, too much centralization for perceived efficiency, no creativity and when all goes wrong, no one admitting failure. Ta-dah.
No comments:
Post a Comment