A Mind of My Own

Has anyone read today’s ST? The headline news states that we will be pushed to take public transport instead of owning a car. No wonder they’re so happy with the rising oil prices. However, oil prices also affect our groceries’ prices, mind you.

Anyway I digress.

It’s reported that there’s a drop in people taking the public transport. Bus fares recent rise, remember? More people are driving. Have they ever wondered why? The bus frequency is due to the road traffic whenever the public feedback that we have to wait 15 to 45 minutes for a bus. That’s not all, the rising bus fares did not mean any increase in better service such as no sudden brakes, frequent accelerate-brake pedals being depressed, better frequencies or shorter time spent. So why would we be willing to pay more for better services when it’s not being done now? The fares have rised but we don’t see anything else being better.

The buses are being crowded with none of the frequencies being shortened, that would be better service but it’s not being done. I hate to wait for 20 minutes just because the bus that I just missed had been delayed. The next bus is may come 5 minutes later but because it’s early before its scheduled time, it crawls, slightly faster than a casual cyclist.

The bus drivers are rude too, such as one incident I encountered while on a packed bus. This student had already scanned his EZLink card, the bus driver was rudely saying, “你，你照了没有？”The student said, “有，照了。”

“照给我看。” was his rude instruction. The kid did and he proceeded to drive without much more being said. That was rude. He didn’t even apologise for not believing him! On afterthought, maybe there were students who decided to hoodwink him before and he generalised that all will try the same stunt.

For the benefit of those who don’t have newspapers, below is my scanned pictures since I don’t want to be sued for typing it out. I’ve broken the whole report into 3 parts because the original was simply too big and would take a long loading time.