How to solve the sick SMRT?

After hiring a salesgirl and paying her millions to run the MRT and making great profits while the train system headed to a standstill, SMRT did not learn anything. You just cannot hire someone with no experience in the running of a train system to manage a train system. The train system is more complicated than what it appears to be. This is the view taken from recent comments after the flood of problems and breakdowns. And they went to hire another with no experience in running a train, a soldier, to run it and the rest is history.

Then there is this volunteer in Khaw Boon Wan, also got no experience in running a train, that came in to try to solve the problem but also hitting a dead wall. He thought it was a piece of cake. Nah, it is not so easy to fix a faulty train system. This is not like switching it on and off, like stopping the building of more HDB flats and then restarting the same process.

The commuters are disgusted, exasperated, frustrated, losing their patience, and now every commuter, from the old to the young are crying out loud to voice their two cents worth of opinion and solutions. Outsource the management to some experienced train operators, hire foreign talents, send our millionaire train managers to learn from those earning peanuts in other countries, and all the standard solutions that one trick pony can think of. Then the same bunch of commuters answered themselves with their self doubts and doubting questions. Could these work? Of course cannot lah.

The best solution I can think of to temporary solve this problem and stop all the kpkbs and the pressure exerted on the train operator/govt is to tell the people that a complete overhaul or a complete rebuild, a new system, is the answer. Just this announcement alone will immediately stop all the kpkbs. Tell them the replacement system will take 5 to 10 years and the commuters would just have to live with it. You want a new and trouble free train system or not? The answer must be yes. And if yes, you got to bear with it, just 5 or 10 years to wait. In the meantime when the train is down and out, it is the commuters problem to find their ways to their destinations. As for the train employees, tell them to apply long term no pay leave and return when the new train system is up and running. Can save a lot of manpower cost.

This decision will buy 5 to 10 years of peace or at least the criticisms and complaints would die down for sure. And during this period of waiting and getting more frustrated, the commuters would get to reflect on the half baked or half working system and might even say, at least it is working now and then. It is better than nothing. They would get to appreciate a flawed system when there is no working system available, just like in the land of the blind, the one eye jack is king, even if they demand to be paid in the millions.

And you know what would happen after a few months without the train? The commuters would be begging for the flawed train system to run again. Never mind if it breaks down everyday, at least sometimes it would be working. Then the operators can be reemployed with all the staff and run the flawed and daily breaking down train all over again and no one would dare to complain again. If they dare to complain, threaten to take down the train and to rebuild a new one and the commuters have to wait for another 5 or 10 years for it to be operational.

This solution is kinda sound like Redbean's Art of Management, don't you think so? Just kick the bucket further down the road to buy time and peace.