Don’t leave home without it

The senior citizens may be thinking of their pioneer generation cards as the most precious item to be carried along wherever they go. The young may be thinking of their credit cards or their latest mobile phones. This phrase of ‘don’t leave home without it’ has taken on a new meaning.

Last night we witnessed the most serious MRT breakdown when the two main lines, North South and East West went down at the same time at evening peak hours. The frustration and anger and the increasing perception of an unreliable public transport system are getting to the nerves of the commuters. Despite so many assurance and compliments of how well the SMRT has done, how much money has been invested to improve the system, the breakdowns are not going to stop and are getting more serious. The image that comes to many people’s mind is the 6.9m or 10m population that the people have been daily prepared for.

Now with this crippling failure of a public transport system that commuters had taken for granted for the last 3 decades and now seeing breakdowns as a new normal, would there be a rethink about our ability to live with a population more than the present 5.4m? Are we up to it or just trying to psyche ourselves that we can do it when the incidents of breakdown are saying otherwise?

Lui Tuck Yew must have run out of expletives to apologise to the people on every breakdown. He might as well have a pre recorded speech to broadcast inside the train whenever a breakdown occurs. And he should also set up a permanent Committee of Inquiry to investigate on train breakdowns with such frequencies.

As for the commuters, they must be prepared for it as well. Forget about the free bus services when a break down occurs. They are not prepared for it, badly organized and too little to cope with the huge numbers of commuters needing to be dispersed as quickly as they could. How many buses would be needed to move the commuters? And how many commuters know how the free bus service system works? The MRT staff is just as good as blur about the bus service and they have great problems handling the crowd.

What is the best solution? It may be a good idea for every commuter to carry a folding bike with them. This is going to be the most effective and reliable tool to cope with the train breakdowns. They can simply unfold the bikes and zip away quickly.  And with the Singapore Made Aleoca bikes at very affordable prices, it should not be too much of a strain on the pockets.  For the richer Singaporeans, they can flaunt their Brompton bikes in the train to show that they are of a different commuter class, carrying the Rolls Royce of folding bikes in the train.

Yes, don’t leave home without it. You will need it more frequently than you think. And it will help the MRT to manage the crowding problems in the stations. And no need to be so blur and lost on which free bus to take. We need to help ourselves and help the MRT. It is our responsibility and our problem to take care of ourselves than to add to the mess and jams at the stations.

But before you go and grab that folding bike, check with MRT which models are acceptable. I know the Brompton model is definitely ok, but not all folding bikes can be lugged into the train. You will be stopped by the MRT staff if the bike does not meet their criteria. Maybe Lui Tuck Yew may want to offer some vouchers to the commuters to buy the folding bikes. Or maybe some kind of subsidies as the commuters are trying to help MRT with the breakdown and crowding problems. Or MRT may want to go into selling folding bikes business as this is an important tool needed by commuters now.

What do you think?