The Skeptical Optimist

I am a late comer to this driving thing. I still have a lovely neon yellow and orange probation plate, warning off drivers on my front and back windscreens. It’s not that I’m a terrible newbie driver; I still signal at every lane change and turn, and check and recheck my blindspots… Still there are some things that I don’t do very well! Like gauge how much to reverse when I’m parking – hence the pretty dent on the back of my second-hand honda!

I bought my first ever car about 3 months ago and frankly I can’t quite imagine life without it anymore. I used to be a pretty hardcore non car person, even when I was studying in the United States I actually trekked back and forth to the supermarket with a hiking backpack (yes, I was young, foolish and quite fit!) Even with a kid in tow, no maid and 6-7 months pregnant I still used to take public transport and only cab it when I had a lot of groceries. Many of my friends thought I was quite mad, but I just calculated how it was totally not worth it to get a car in Singapore, what with the ERP, road tax, COE, parking, fuel prices, etc… Things obviously changed when I had my second son – there was no way I could handle both toddler and newborn by myself in a taxi, not to mention groceries or shopping. So my husband and I got our licenses and a modest, fuel-efficient honda jazz, crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

It’s definitely more expensive yes, but there are all these intangibles that you can’t put a value on: like not waiting for public transport with a pram and crochety children, not having to be put on hold calling for a cab, not having to deal with erratic taxi drivers or those people on trains and buses who pretend to be sound asleep even when you’re 8 months pregnant with a toddler and pram and obviously need a seat on the bus/train.

I wonder whether it’s just a function of being in Singapore – when we were holidaying in Amsterdam (pregnant, with toddler and pram) – we never had a problem getting onto trams and people were always lining up to give up their seats to us. Some trams even had designated pram/bicycle bays. It’s even simple gestures, like in Tokyo when you say “Excuse me” because it’s your stop and an already packed train squeezes itself even more to open a path for you to get off the train, and the people getting on at that stop do not try to trample over you in their bid to get on the train first!

So definitely it’s a combination of infrastructural and etiquette-based factors that make a car a logical option for those who can afford it. But coming back to the question of cost – with the recent ERP hikes the debate comes back again… Is electronic road pricing a good way to control congestion or does it just unfairly penalise people who have cars who have no alternate routes to go to work or back home? Are there more efficient ways of ensuring good traffic flow like staggered working times or tele-commuting? Or even making public transport more efficient, cost-effective and comfortable and then incentivising people to take it (like with more seasonal passes) instead of just taxing car owners – some of whom may actually own cars out of necessity and not luxury.

I understand that we are a small island, and that we have to control the population of cars on the island for the sake of minimise pollution and congestion – but really – has enough been done to ensure a comfortable public transportation system that is time and cost-efficient for the commuter and not just for the service-providers? And perhaps for the disabled, pregnant and elderly – special seats could be set aside and labeled as such – quite like lots for the disabled that are now left empty on instinct by able bodied drivers. We don’t have to legislate all kinds of bad behaviour away, but surely this could be somehow enforced…

Tags: driving, ERP hikes, public transport