More Retarded Thinking (MRT)

Mr Lui Tuck Yew has revealed that the government plans to built MORE MRT lines in the future. MORE however is not the solution and the government/Mr Lui does not seem able to grasp that fact. More is the can kicking and simplistic solution that does not need someone of ministerial calibre to propose.

Building new lines will NOT ease crowding or increase capacity of existing lines simply because existing lines are crowded due of their DESTINATIONS. Eg: If the majority of the crowds on the train want to go to Raffles Place MRT station, more MRT lines that do not stop there will not help at all. If anything, they will funnel even more people from places not currently served by the MRT into the system thereby further exacerbating the situation.

Building more MRT lines is not unlike building flyovers to 'ease' traffic congestion on roads. They actually do nothing of the sort. All flyovers do is to merely transfer the problem from one location to another.

Even more retarded thinking is in evidence by LTA plans to send people down to bus stops to check on arrival times of buses. Do you see the desperation here people? In addition to 'check Mang' (mosquitoes) inspectors, expect a 'Check Bus' job opening coming soon to a job fair near you.

These bus spotters are also supposed to audit how packed the buses are. All of these information should be easily available through the Easylink payment system. When does a bus arrive at a bus stop? That can be obtained from the time a passenger's Easylink card is deducted on boarding the bus. How crowded is the bus? That information can be found (throughout a bus' journey) by the number of passengers on board compared to its allowed optimum capacity.

If the bus company's IT department has any personnel worthy of having an IT designation, these information can easily be obtained (possibly even in real time) for any of its buses on the road. Why are we wasting human resources doing unnecessary work and doing it stupidly? These bus spotters will still have to input their data or send their report back somehow somewhere. Why do this when all the necessary information is already available in a computer system?

This, ladies and gentlemen is the quality of 'thinking' that is coming out of our Minister Lui and the Admin level officers from his ministry and various departments like the LTA. These are the people who are running/ruining our country and whom we are (still) paying top dollar for.

The only real solution is to reduce ridership. And the best way to reduce ridership is to reduce the size of our population. LESS is More. Any 'solution' that requires MORE input/resources is not a solution. If More is indeed the panacea of all our problems, then why has the government not fully supported Prof Lim Chong Yah's proposal to pay lower income workers substantially MORE?