Sunday, June 22, 2008

Driving and ERP

I have been driving for quite sometimes (back in 2007). There are a few reason why i drive.

Reason :

1)Faster travelling time (most of the time)
2)Do not need to squezee with the crowds (esp rush hours !)
3)Less waiting time (back to reason no.1)
4)More comfortable
5)Lazy

Yup, lazy is one of the main reason. Lazy to wait, lazy to squezee, lazy to walk to mrt station, change mrt line, walk to bus stop.
Basically having a car is more convenient, but it does comes with a price.

It use to be quite ok to drive, but nowadays it getting more and more expensive. Take for eg. Petrol. Its one big killer. I still remember the good old days that full tank cost me $50, now full tank dont even cost me $100, it cost me much more!

A per litre cost more than a bottle of coke (a litre), although i dont drink coke, i prefer water, but i guess petrol fee is qetting a bit ridiculous out there.

Ok, petrol is one issue, now come the ERP. What wrong with the government. I mean why do they seriously need to extend the timing and worse of all, increase the timing for sat.

I just watch the news.

One of our favourite MP says that "It's not the purpose of the government to make the people suffer more. It doesn't make sense that our government wants the people to suffer under high inflation. The purpose of ERP increases is not to increase revenue for the government. The one and only purpose of ERP increases is to manage traffic congestion in Singapore. If there is no traffic congestion, there will be no ERP increases."

Tell me about it, does this sentence really do make sense. There are many more ways to reduce traffic congestion and not simply by increasing ERP charges and setting up more ERP gantries. Even implementing ERP at certain timing where all of us know for some places there are no so call traffic congestion.

I guess we Singapore are not a vocal lot, we just suffer in "silence", we always say "ayiah boh pian lah, no choice lah what can we do" anyway i'm one of the culprit. I just wonder what will happen if we can be just as vocal as the Malaysia or even Thailand.

Will our lives be better??, or will our country economy remain the same if we can be more vocals like what Malaysian or Thais ppl.

To be frank, if a highly paid professional can just think of increasing ERP charges and add more ERP gantries to control the traffic. If that's the only measure to control traffic then i guess, other country esp Thailand, can consider this option, then they would not be having jams every morning!