Speech from a so call 'Division 1' politican?

[Porfirio Rubirosa]

Let me deal with the car issue again, regardless of the FT issue, most Singgies want to own a car (please correct me if I am mistaken). Heck just go look at RP's Edmund Ng's letter in Today 20/8 where he comes up with a really 'bright' idea to encourage young couples to have more babies - waive COE for first-time parents and free road tax for the next two years, and a two-year road tax waiver for the second child onwards!

Roads are finite and Singapore is a small island, so road space is finite. So how do you propose trying to balance these 2 factors i.e. Singgies desire to own a car vs finite road space? Something has to give. To me personally I think the PAP government made a mistake in giving in to the public sometime back by releasing more COEs. The moment a person has a car he/she wants to use the car, that is human nature. LKY himself admitted that the PAP government did not realise the full impact. So what happens, you shall eventually reach a stage of road congestion. So how? Do you want to endure road gridlock? Will this affect the economy? Is ERP the answer? What about UK's possible pay as you drive system?

Bottom line there are NO easy answers to this intractable problem, and if there is, I have yet to see it. Saying that, I think this PAP government should be held accountable for still not coming up to full scratch in providing a truly world class public transport system. Since it wants the public to stop using cars then it is incumbent on the PAP government to see that such standards are reached and thereafter maintained.

As for LHL's "money no enough" stand, well in a way he is right, you got to grow the "pie" in order to give out the slices and this is a never ending process. The critical issue is whether that "pie" is being distributed reasonably fairly and equitably.

You may not be right, the congestion is partly due to opening of immigration policies and when our population increased, road cogestion also increased and not only that, our public transport systems also became extremely congested not just the cars on the road. Utlimately, the blame is still on the govt because one policy created problems and the next policy to solve the problems make it even more problematic than the first one thus forcing them to erect ERP and even upped the charges thinking it will solve all side effects of the policies.

During his NDP speech, LHL one very clear statement summed up his 3 hours speech. He said
"SINGAPORE NEEDS MONEY AND MORE MONEY
now do we need to say more why Singaporean suffer?

 

[char_jig_kar]

Wah, so many "talents" here claiming to be better than the said Division 1 politician.

After all you all said, not impressed leh :p

is it? goh meng seng not bad what. what he said here make more sense than PM LHL.

 

[Getloud]

This is what i find amusing. At the same time of helping more people to own car, he created the problem of congestion and the solution is to erect more gantries. So why do the former in the first place?

This was taken from Channelnewsasia

(2) Enable more people to afford cars
(3) Increase ERP to control congestion

Funny little dragon.

Same can be applied to alcohol and cigarette.
Bottom line are taxes that can be collected to increase their 'profit sharing'.
For cars, they can just restrict the number of COE issued and let the COE price inflate and road congestion problem solved.
But imagine the COE, road tax, radio and TV license, fuel tax, ERP you charges they can collect if more vehicles on the road, you calculate the 'Indian Account' of their earning and you can understand how they can throw away money like nobody business. Making losses here and there and still can tell SG no problem. PUI!!!

 

[troubledtimes]

Funny little dragon.

You mean 'tired dragon'?

 

[snrcitizen]

Roads are finite and Singapore is a small island, so road space is finite.

Just to add a suggestion.

Road space is finite as long as the government's vision is in 2-D or 2-dimensional.

There are countries which use the 3-D approach by building multi-layered roads/highways thus avoiding the lateral (2-D) use of land.